


We Need an Umbrella

by icanthinkofausername, icarusty (icanthinkofausername)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, The Umbrella Academy (Comics), The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Apocalypse, Happy Ending, I love him, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Marvel Universe, Other, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sad, Time Travel, Timeline Shenanigans, after the first jump, and a jerk, featuring: tony being very confused, five is a dork, idk if they count as characters, pepper being also very confused, random shield agents - Freeform, they're trying, vanya also needs a hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 37,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27444139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icanthinkofausername/pseuds/icanthinkofausername, https://archiveofourown.org/users/icanthinkofausername/pseuds/icarusty
Summary: The Icarus Theatre jump gone wrong.Allison fell. She fell and she fell and she wondered. Is this what Five feels like all the time? It was a fast feeling, like she was sticking her head out of a car window, but all over. Her fingers got tingly, like pins and needles. Allison felt all of that and more as she fell, but only for a second. Then she slammed into a floor, gasping for air. She laid there for a second, before standing, wobbly. She felt the wind rush past her, whipping her hair in all directions. She was on top of a skyscraper, on what seemed like a helicopter pad. That was the first thing she noticed, was that the air was thin and the ground far below. Swallowing hard, she realised her siblings weren’t with her.Allison started to panic, felt that helpless bubble of fear well up in her, the same feeling she’d gotten when Vanya’d cut her throat or when she’d seen the moon explode into pieces at the Icarus theater, just moments ago. She turned around and looked up at the top of the skyscraper, where a giant A blazed out over the city. A? thought Allison. What’s the A stand for?
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Comments: 209
Kudos: 574





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone who's already read the thing is gonna be confused. listen up. I'm new at this and I hadn't written this prologue until like ~two o'clock last night~ so sorry about that. this whole thing is a wip so be patient

Five was no stranger to falling. He fell every time he teleported, fell into that blue light and landed, on his feet, exactly where he wanted. But the old man had been right. Time travel wasn’t exact, wasn’t precise like science or math or anything Five appreciated in his life. It was messy, it was complicated, and it didn’t obey the rules Five wanted it to. Like a tempremental woman. Enticing, but dangerous. Maybe that was why he liked it. 

Every time he felt like time travelling, he remembered the exultation he’d felt the first time, when he’d felt those ripples of time running like sand through his fingers. But then the sand had turned to water, had passed too quickly and then-- 

Gone. Turned to dust and stone and fire. No life. None of the people he’d hated, none of the people he’d loved. Though he didn’t like that he felt that way, Five would rather live in a world filled to the brim with people he hated than nobody at all. 

So when he’d tried it in the theater he’d felt that joy, that thrill, before his stomach had lurched and he’d started seeing ashes. PTSD. Delores had diagnosed him, she’d wanted to be a therapist before… before a knife stabbed in a table and layers of time peeled away like an onion. Five didn’t think of it as PTSD, because in his head he was still living it. Every day, at least once, things started to smoke and he started to see disaster, started to see what had ruined his life. Hallucinations, things that seemed ridiculous, like a dream, when he came out of them. 

This was different. 

He’d landed on his front, groaning. Almost immediately, he realised his hands were empty. Five tried to look up, but his eyes were blurry with smoke. 

_It’s fine! It’s fine you’re just--you’re just imagining--_

Five got to his feet, coughing. “Vanya!” he shouted, feeling that awful hammering sensation in his head. Panic. 

_Thisisn’thappeningohGodohpleasenotagain--_

“A-Allison!” he pleaded, spinning around. He was high up, high enough to see the destruction below. It was quiet, it was so goddamn quiet… 

_Nonononono oh fuck--_

Fire and ash warped Five’s vision, so much that he had to turn back around to the building attached to the cracked platform he was standing on. The glass that was once a window was strewn across the inside and the outside. The couches on the inside were beat up and almost torn apart. Five stumbled forward. 

_I can’t be imagining this. It’s too vivid I can’t be--it’s happened again, ohmyGod…_

Five stepped through the window frame, feeling his bowling shoes crunch on shattered glass. The wind suddenly stopped buffeting him as he passed through. Without it, things were eerily silent, so silent Five could hear every panicked breath he involuntarily made. 

“Hi,” breathed a voice, coughing a little.

Five jumped and teleported onto the half-collapsed bar inside, holding up his hands in a defensive position. The last time someone had surprised him in the apocalypse it had been the Handler, and if Five could go back and change his actions he would have shot her point-blank. Well. He would have gone with her and then shot everyone in the Commission point-blank. Five couldn’t see anyone in the room, however. Were they hiding? Five quickly used one hand to wipe off his tears. “Who are you?”

“I’ve wired this to play when anybody enters the patio, but it was a bit of a rush job, given I’m not anywhere near the tower right now,” said the voice, sounding strained. Five spotted a mostly intact speaker in the corner of the room. He teleported to it, squatting down so he could hear better. Now that he was closer, he could hear little grunts and explosions coming from the recording. “Listen, you’re the last blip on the timeline, our last hope, really. We-We are the Avengers, Earth’s mightiest heroes. You won’t have heard of us,” he said with a wry chuckle, and then a cry of pain. “Different dimensions and all that.” What sounded like something crumbling made the speakers crackle. 

“Get to it, Stark, there’s no time!” shouted somebody else in the recording, a female voice. Her voice sounded like it had been wrenched from her chest, but somehow still rang strong through the recording. “I know, I know!” the man yelled back. “Basically,” he continued, his voice shaky. “We need your help.”

Five blinked. “What?” he whispered, taking the black box into his hands, red wires trailing through his fingers. 

“Y-Your siblings have been coming to us for years, dropping in randomly, and this last battle, we called in all the help we can get, every resource except you guys and there’s been _nothing_ ,” he gasped, “and I mean _nothing_ , we’ve been able to do that can stop it. We need your help, please--” 

Something thudded, and then the speaker crackled, and the recorder started to buzz with static. There was just labored breathing, a sound that made Five clutch the black box a little tighter. 

Then--

_“Good luck, Number Five.”_

And then the breathing stopped. 

Five swallowed, staring with wide eyes. He looked up suddenly, hugging the recording to his chest. “Shit,” he whispered, looking out through that broken window onto a sunset-orange skyline that wasn’t sunset at all. "Shit!"


	2. Falling for the First Time

Allison fell. She fell and she fell and she wondered. _Is this what Five feels like all the time?_ It was a fast feeling, like she was sticking her head out of a car window, but all over. Her fingers got tingly, like pins and needles. Allison felt all of that and more as she fell, but only for a second. Then she slammed into a floor, gasping for air. She laid there for a second, before standing, wobbly. She felt the wind rush past her, whipping her hair in all directions. She was on top of a skyscraper, on what seemed like a helicopter pad. That was the first thing she noticed, was that the air was thin and the ground far below.

Swallowing hard, she realised her siblings weren’t with her. 

Allison started to panic, felt that helpless bubble of fear well up in her, the same feeling she’d gotten when Vanya’d cut her throat or when she’d seen the moon explode into pieces at the Icarus theater, just moments ago. She turned around and looked up at the top of the skyscraper, where a giant _A_ blazed out over the city. _A?_ thought Allison. _What’s the A stand for?_

Allison walked hesitantly near the edge of the helicopter pad, looking out over the city. She spotted the empire state building and that lump of fear increased. New York City? She’d been there before and there were new things, new buildings and the one she was on certainly wasn’t in her memory. Allison spun around, intending to head through the doors when she saw a man standing in the doorway, wearing only a tank top and sweatpants, staring at her with a blueberry half-raised to his mouth. Allison backed up, scared, before realising there wasn’t anywhere to go. “Hi,” said the man, his voice blankly shocked. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

She wasn’t quite sure if that was an accusation or an observation. Allison nodded anyway, clutching her thin coat closer to herself. The man squinted. “Can’t you talk?” She shook her head. “Okay, listen, you’re gonna come in. And you’re gonna write down how you can summon magic blue portals and everything else important, and depending on what you write we’re gonna send you to S.H.I.E.L.D or let you go, capische?”

She didn’t quite know what S.H.I.E.L.D was, but she didn’t have another option, so Allison nodded hesitantly, stepping forward. The man held the door open and she walked past carefully, reminding herself she could still fight better than most people, despite the blood loss and lack of powers. The man closed the door and swiped a shopping list off the fridge that was just inside. There was a sort of lounge thing, with a bar and drinks, but past it was a table with papers and little models of things. The man grabbed a pencil off the table and turned back to Allison, still looking at her with that curious miffed expression. There was a bar just inside, next to the helicopter pad, and he slid into the bar stool, gesturing for her to sit next to him. “Now,” he said. “Do you know who I am?”

Allison shook her head. She didn’t. “I’m Tony Stark,” he said slowly. At her blank face, he shrugged. “I’m a billionaire playboy tech genius, that’s basically it.” Allison digested this new information before grabbing the pen and shopping list. She flipped it over and scribbled on the back. 

_Allison Hargreeves_

He read it. “Nice name. Now. Where did you come from?”

She hesitated. _What year is it?_

Tony blinked. “Uh. 2017?”

That was good. Three years to stop the apocalypse, if she could get back to Ontario in time… _I’m from 2019_

He let out a low whistle. “From the future? That’s a new one… what happens? Who wins the superbowl this year?” he asked, leaning forward eagerly. 

Five had said something about not disrupting the timeline, hadn’t he… Allison looked out at that new New York, with all its shiny buildings. She looked back at this apparent billionaire, who she’d never heard of. And she understood. _Different timeline. Different people? I think. Don’t know_

He pouted. “Damn. Well, okay, fine. How did you get here?”

She let out a little huff of laughter before hesitating and scribbling down an answer. _Gonna think I’m crazy_

“I guarantee you I won’t.”

_My brother has powers_

“So it wasn’t you? Who made the portal?” Tony said slowly, eyes searching her face. It was a little surprising he wasn’t floored by the bit about his powers. 

_Yes_

He sat back and let out a little huff. “Well, where is he?” Yes, where was Five. He’d split them up. At least he hadn’t made them their younger selves, which had happened to him last time. Allison wasn’t prepared to go through puberty again. There was no telling when he’d show his face. Last time he’d taken 17 years. 

_First time he tried to take people with him. He’s bad at it anyway, probably messed it up_

Tony nodded, tapping his fingers. Then he paused. He picked up the paper and squinted at it. “You said ‘people’. Are there more of you?”

She hesitated. _I might be the only one who survived._ Allison swallowed, looking at the paper. It was an ugly truth. Because she was the only one who came out of the portal she was likely the only one to come out at all. Five had warned it could get messy. Luther and Diego and Klaus and Vanya… Oh God, Claire. She’d probably never get to see her again. 

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Tony said, like he didn’t know what to say. 

She grabbed the paper back. _It’s alright. Didn’t like most of them anyway_. She attempted a weak smile and Tony smiled a little back. “So, just for reference, because Fury’s gonna yell at me if I don’t get all the info from you, who was going to be with you? Like how many, what they look like… also to see if we can find them.”

_6 ½ more._

He squinted at the paper, baffled. “How can there be a half?”

 _One of them is dead. But…_ Allison scribbled that out. _Complicated._

“Okay, I’m just gonna go with six.”

_Okay. Names: Luther, Diego, me, Klaus, 00.05, and Vanya. WATCH OUT FOR VANYA. She might be mad_

“What do you mean? And which of those is the dude with powers?”

 _Oh. We all have powers. Vanya’s are… weird. Dangerous._ As she saw Tony’s eyebrows raise she hurried to fix Vanya’s image. _She’s also really nice!! She's just mad right now. Not dangerous normally._

Tony just looked more baffled. “All of you have powers?”

_Yes. Sorry, didn’t tell you. Here, I’ll give you their descriptions? So you can find them? Good?_

He nodded. “We can try.”

 _Okay. Luther. Shaped like a wine glass, might be kind of ape-like. Don’t ask. Super strength, kind of a lovable giant? Hurt him and I’ll gut you, Stark._ Tony grinned, wiggling his eyebrows. _He’s my adopted brother._ The wiggling stopped. _Diego. Likes knives. Throws shit. Can breathe underwater for a really long time. Like, indefinitely. It’s useless but kind of cool._

“Diego. What’s he look like?”

 _Scar right here._ Allison demonstrated, drawing a line from her ear to her cheek. _Latino-ish or Spanish, we don’t really know. Oh, Luther’s classic white boy. Blonde, blue eyes, the works._

“Right. Next is… Klaus.”

_Skinny white boy who’s more than a little queer._

Tony chuckled. “Well, that’s half the people in New York, Allison. You’re gonna have to give me more than that.”

Allison tapped the pencil to her chin. _Might talk to himself. Addict, though I think he’s gotten clean._

“Might talk to himself. Right. Okay, you’ve just written a number for the next one--”

A door slammed open from behind them. “Tony, you were supposed to have a meeting with… Uh.” Allison turned and found a disgruntled lady with strawberry blonde hair and a brown business dress standing near the doorway into the rest of the building. She blinked and looked at Allison, who gave an awkward little wave of hello. “Tony, who is this?”

Tony grinned. “Her name is Allison, she teleported onto our helicopter pad at 6:30 in the goddamn morning, she’s from the future and she’s got powers. I am so excited, you don’t even know.”

The woman blinked, and then walked towards Allison with her hand extended. Her face was carefully blank, but Allison recognized it as the expression of someone dying with questions and surprise trying to keep cool. She wore it well. “I’m Pepper,” the woman said. “Allison, huh? Why are you in our skyscraper?”’ Allison shook her hand, tapping her throat with her other hand. Pepper’s eyes lit up with understanding. “Ah.”

“She says she’s here by accident,” explained Tony, waving the shopping list. “Haven’t gotten most of the facts yet, but basically her brother did a risky time-travel-teleport thing and she landed here.”

Pepper’s eyebrows furrowed as she folded her arms. “Why did he do the risky time-travel-teleport thing?”

Oh. Vanya. Was the apocalypse still on? She was unsure, but Tony and Pepper were looking at her for answers. Allison hesitantly took the paper, before Tony squinted at it. “You don’t have enough room,” he said. “Jarvis, where’s my tablet? The red one.”

A disembodied voice chimed from above. “On your work desk underneath the plans for the new helicarrier supporter engines,” it said softly. Allison jumped and looked around for the speakers before Pepper put a soothing hand on her wrist. 

“That’s Jarvis. AI. He’s like an electronic butler,” Pepper said apologetically. “Sorry if that was startling.”

Allison made an ‘it’s okay’ gesture as Tony came back with the tablet. She took the computer pen and stared at the white screen. How much should she tell them? She’d had a huge hand in the end of the world, what if they locked her up? That would solve the apocalypse, but would it happen anyway? Allison tapped the pen nervously on the bar. 

“Come on,” said Tony, leaning his elbows on the table across from her. “Gotta tell us sometime.” That was true. But how to explain? And how could she do it without condemning Vanya? Because it was a given they’d lock her up like Luther had done. Eventually she decided to just keep it vague. 

_APOCALYPSE_ she wrote. 

The billionaire’s eyebrows rose, but Allison didn’t see because her eyes were still fixed on that word. That word. APOCALYPSE, scrawled in messy handwriting, black pixels on white. 

“What kind of apocalypse?” came the quiet question from behind her. 

_Moon exploded. Asteroids hit the earth… kablooey._

Tony tapped his chin. “So… that’s going to happen? In three years?”

 _Different timeline. Or maybe we’ll do it again._ As soon as she wrote that, she crossed it out, but Pepper had already seen. 

“What do you mean, ‘we’ll do it again’?” she asked slowly. Allison hid her face in her hair, and shut her eyes. She didn’t want to deal with this, not when she couldn’t talk. Talking had always fixed everything for her, and she didn’t want to explain through paper and writing. She could spin it to be good in words, not in letters. Allison grabbed the tablet among concerned stares. She hid it while she wrote, taking a deep breath in and summoning that little bit of her, the little bit that could do things, change things, make things happen. She turned the tablet towards Tony and Pepper, willing it to happen. 

_I heard a rumor you fell asleep for ten minutes and when you woke, you didn’t remember I was ever here._

She watched as their eyes scanned the words, watched as their eyes fluttered closed, watched as they slumped in their seats. 

Allison took the wallet on the workbench after spotting it on her way out the door. She took the elevator down to the ground level, nodding with the grace of an actress at passer-by workers, stealing a scarf off a desk when her bandage attracted weird looks. She would have to find her siblings and her way in the world on her own. 


	3. Shut Up, Ben

Klaus loved the void. It felt like being drunk, high, and somehow none of those all at once. It was a great disappointment when he finally fell out. He crashed his nose directly into the surprisingly slippery ground, groaning. He blinked when he looked out because there was glass on all sides except the top. Klaus scrambled to his feet. “Luther?” he said, even though Luther clearly wasn’t around. Nobody was. It was freezing out, too, Klaus realised as he pressed his face against the glass. 

“Where are we?” asked Ben, who was outside of the glass prison. Klaus looked down, because there was a layer of glass and then concrete. Klaus squinted at the building attached to the concrete. 

“Are we… are we on a helicopter pad?” Klaus asked, baffled. Ben nodded, and looked over the edge, which was only about ten feet away. 

Ben suddenly spun back around, tapping his chin. “Someone knew you were coming,” he said slowly. “That glass box is exactly at the spot where you landed. Maybe our siblings came before, and someone’s expecting us?”

Klaus didn’t know about that. All he knew was that he needed to get out. He jumped, but his fingers couldn’t reach the top of the glass, despite having extremely long legs. Ben walked into the glass with him. “Here, here. Do the thing again and I’ll lift you up,” he said encouragingly, making a platform with his hands. Klaus concentrated, made Ben’s hands corporeal, and stepped gingerly onto them, before collapsing and trying again. He struggled on top of him, felt his hands glow blue briefly, making Ben’s entire body corporeal. Klaus grabbed the top of the glass, standing, wobbly, on Ben’s shoulders. Then they fell in a heap. Klaus groaned, rolling onto his side. 

“I landed on your pokey elbow,” he whined as Ben stood up. 

He sighed. “You are such a baby.”

“No I’m not.”

“Baby,” Ben taunted. “A big baby who can’t even get out of his crib.”

Klaus stuck his tongue out as he lurched to his feet. “C’mon. Let’s get out.” Ben stuck out his hands again and Klaus, carefully this time, put his foot on his hands. Grabbing his shoulders, Klaus levered himself upward until he could grab the top of the glass. His hands slipped on the wet-with-dew top of the glass, but there was an edge so he could grab onto it. Ben started to grunt with effort underneath him, so Klaus made a quick jump to lever himself on top of the glass. He ended up on the other side, hanging off by his hands. 

“Let go!” urged Ben from inside the glass, his hand halfway through the solid object. “Come on!”

He grimaced as his hands started to slip. “Okay,” he breathed, getting himself ready. He let his hands go, dropping onto the concrete with a crack. He rolled onto his back, trying to remember his training from when he was little. His leg only hurt a little. Oh, no, it hurt a lot more now. 

“You alright?” asked Ben, suddenly in front of Klaus. 

Klaus stood on wobbly feet. His ankle ached and it made a weird twangy pain in his joint when he moved it, but he was out. “Just peachy, Ben. Okay. What now?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“What?” Klaus scoffed. “You’re supposed to have the plan!”

“You’re the living one. I’m not even in this plane half the time.”

He threw his hands up and started walking towards the available door. “I thought we had this down. You think up the things when the things need thinking and I- ”

“Look pretty when your looks are pretty,” sighed Ben, massaging the area between his brows. He looked disappointed. “I know the stupid rhyme, dammit. Okay. I’d advise you get to ground level.”

Klaus peered into the dark windows after he’d tried the locked door, but the lights were off and he couldn’t see anything. “Ben, I don’t know if we should break into somebody’s skyscraper, doesn’t seem… y’know, legal.”

“When have you ever cared about legality?” scoffed Ben, but he sounded distracted. Klaus turned back to his brother, who was staring at some point in the night sky. He pointed. “What is that?” Klaus squinted. His vision had never been the best, he’d had glasses in his teenage years before he’d said ‘fuck it’ and threw them out a window. But after a moment he spotted the little light Ben was tracking with his finger. 

“Shooting star?” Klaus suggested, but he’d gone stargazing with a hippie boyfriend once and it didn’t look like the shooting stars they’d seen. 

Ben shook his head. “It’s coming right at us.”

There was a pause as they looked at the growing dot. “D’ya think we should run?” whispered Klaus. 

“Where would we go?” replied Ben, still squinting at the rapidly approaching object. “We’re on a helicopter pad. Also, isn’t there two of them now? A blue and a yellow?”

Klaus made a dismissive noise with his mouth. “Hell if I know. Kinda just looks like a blur to me.”

The blur got rapidly larger until Klaus could make out the shape of two men, one floating, leaking blue light, and the other’s eyes were glowing. They paused about fifty feet out. “Glowing eyes and hands,” whispered Ben. “Gotta be someone with powers.”

“Yeah, also, you know, the fact that they’re flying, Ben,” snapped Klaus, shaking out his hands and walking forward a little bit. The first one, the one leaking blue, was definitely a ghost. Klaus knew what ghosts looked like, and that was one ghosty ghost. There was just sort of a vibe he got when a ghost besides Ben was near, a thing like vibration on the back of his neck. He could sense a ghost from a mile away. It was one of the reasons he never went near a graveyard. 

“What are you doing?” hissed Ben, walking with him. 

Klaus shrugged. “I’m saying hello. Feel free to, you know, tentacle-portal if we get into a fight.” Ben shrugged and folded his arms as Klaus waved. 

“It’s your funeral,” he muttered. "I'm already dead."

“Hello!” Klaus shouted, pointedly ignoring that line. The hovering figure scooched backward a little, his ghost tagging along. “Listen, buddy,” yelled Klaus, spreading his hands in a nothing-up-my-sleeves gesture. “I’m not gonna hurt you if you won’t hurt me. Can you tell me where the hell I am?”

The figure cocked its head and then seemed to decide something, flying about five feet away from Klaus and then touching down. It was made of red and gold metal, shiny and expensive-looking. The faceplate lifted up, revealing a man with a goatee. His jaw clenched when he looked at Klaus. “Hi. You’re in New York, on my skyscraper... out of the glass cage I specifically built to trap you in.”

Klaus rubbed his hands together. “Oh, that was you? Great. Wonderful.” New York. He’d heard good things about the place, mostly from well-traveled drug dealers. 

“What year?” asked Ben, tapping Klaus’s shoulder. 

“Oh, yes. What year?”

The man looked at him for a second, then he made a clicking sound with his mouth. “2017,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse. “What’s your name?”

Klaus chuckled. “Oh, darling, that’s a big question right there. Birth name? Nickname? Name my mom gave me?”

His eyebrows rose. “All of them?”

“Oh, zero-zero-point-zero-four at your service, or Number Four to my father. But Klaus is fine.” The ghost suddenly groaned, holding his head in his hands. He muttered something. 

Klaus blinked, leaning forward. “What did you say?”

The ghost paused, looking at Klaus looking at him. “I didn’t say anything,” said the man in the metal suit, clearly perplexed. 

“No, no, not you,” scoffed Klaus with a dismissive gesture. The ghost, hesitantly, pointed at himself. 

“You can see me?” he whispered, heavily accented.

Klaus nodded. “Kinda my shtick, you know? Oh, this is Ben, by the way.” Ben gave a little wave. “What’s your name?”

“D-Doctor Ho Yinsen.”

“That’s an unfortunate name,” muttered Klaus. “What did you say?”

Ho swallowed. “I-I remarked that you are the one named Klaus. Your sister, a while ago, was talking about you and your siblings.” Ben and Klaus looked at each other. Either Allison or Vanya was here, and one of those meant the world ending. “Tony does not--”

The suit man made a clinking step forward, holding out his hand. “Who the hell are you talking to?” he asked incredulously. Then his face seemed to realise something. He stared at Klaus. “Talks to himself…”

Klaus turned back to the suit man. “Hey, have you seen any of my siblings?” he asked. 

The man, Tony, presumably, huffed with laughter. “Oh God. Yeah, yeah. Allison. Hargreeves. Came a while ago, but she did something to Pepper and I and we don’t remember her at all.”

Klaus snapped his fingers. “She rumored you.”

“How did she rumor him?” asked Ben, turning to Klaus. “She’s mute.”

“How did she do it?” asked Klaus, turning back. It was like being a translator.

The man, still sort of listlessly staring at Klaus, started. “What? Oh, yeah. Wrote something down and when we looked at it, we fell asleep. All we have is the footage and it’s crap. Only the audio's good, and since she didn’t talk…”

“Huh. She’s never been able to rumor someone through paper,” mused Klaus, rubbing his chin. “That’s new. What did you say to her?”

“She wrote something down about an apocalypse, we have that because it was on a tablet, but we asked about it and she freaked,” explained Tony. “Do you know anything about that?”

Klaus nodded, absentminded. His ADD was taking over again without his pills. “Oh, yeah. Apocalypse. Whole shebang. My brother, slippery little guy, did a risky teleport and I guess…” Klaus flopped his arms helplessly. “We got scattered through time on your skyscraper. Sorry about that, I know we’re hard to clean up after.”

The man seemed to come out of his stupor. “The apocalypse. What caused it? How can we help stop it?”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I…” he trailed off. How to explain. There were so many elements, and Klaus probably didn’t know the half of it. Nobody ever told him anything. 

“Has he heard of the Hargreeves?” asked Ben suddenly. He walked over to the ghost. “Hey, buddy, have you heard of Reginald Hargreeves? Umbrella Academy? Would’ve been around seventeen years ago?”

Ho mutely shook his head. “I-I was in Korea at the time.”

“We were pretty famous. Superpowered kids? Robot mother? Not even Reginald Hargreeves? He invented the televator? ”

Another shake of his head. “Still no. But I rather think I would have heard of such a thing, given my work in technology.”

“Huh.” Ben looked back at Klaus. “Klaus, I think we’re in an alternate dimension.”

Tony squinted at Klaus. “What are you staring at?”

“Shh,” said Klaus. “Ben, I don’t know what that means.”

Ben sighed, running a hand through his hair. “Idiot. It means some things are different. Like there’s no Reginald Hargreeves. There’s men in metal suits,” he gestured to the man in the metal suit. “There’s new skyscrapers in New York,” he gestured to the skyscraper, “And there’s no Umbrella Academy.” He gestured to the academy members present.

“Oh,” sighed Klaus. “Is that all? I was afraid it was like, the end of the world.”

“It is!” cried Ben. “Unless Five can get us back, we’re stuck here!”

Klaus blinked, and Tony waved a metal hand at his face. “I’m not appreciating being left out of the conversation here.”

Klaus realised he probably owed Tony an explanation. “Sorry. I talk to dead people. My brother, Ben, here,” he pointed to Ben, “is talking to your friend the ghost. His name is Ho… Ho something.”

“Ho Yinsen?” Tony asked, face going pale. 

Ho’s face lit up. “C-Can you tell Tony to stop blaming himself? He blames himself, for not getting me out in time.”

Klaus suddenly, clearly, felt very sober as he looked at the man in the metal suit, looking at Klaus looking at the doctor. There was something regretful and resigned in the way the doctor looked at Tony that made Klaus’s heart ache. “Oh. Sure. He says to stop blaming yourself for not getting him out in time.”

Tony swallowed. “I-I’ll try. Tell him I took his advice, from when he was alive. I’m better now.”

“He can hear you. He’s smiling.”

Ho stepped forward, reaching out a little. “I-I think I can go now. I’m done. There’s a light.” He smiled fuller. “Thank you,” he whispered. 

They blinked in interest as Ho began to fall apart, dissolving into blue dust. Ben reached towards him in a longing way but the falling apart stopped as soon as it had begun. He had been eager to go. “He’s gone,” said Klaus, shoving his hands in his pockets. God, it was cold. “Finished his unfinished business or something. Anyway, you wanted to know about the apocalypse? Ben doesn’t think it’s happening.”

“Oh,” he said, still miffed from the ghost interaction. “But--”

“Listen, Tony, it’s been fun, but it’s cold up here and I like, just saw my family for the first time in like ten years and now they’re gone. You said you saw Allison?” he asked. 

Tony nodded again. “I don’t know where she is, though. And you’re going to have to stay out here for a little bit, Fury yelled my ear off because she escaped.”

Klaus blinked. “Can I at least go inside?”

“No,” he said. “Not until I check the security footage. And also get backup,” he added seriously.

Ben and Klaus glanced at each other, and then Ben burst into giggles. That started Klaus laughing until he was holding his side. “It’s just me!” he cried. “I literally couldn’t even hurt a fly. The last time I personally hit someone was like…” Klaus thought back. “Okay, it was like two days ago in a bar when someone tried to tell me I couldn’t have fought in the Korean war so I hit him over the head with a fire extinguisher.”

“You couldn’t have fought in the Korean war,” protested Tony as he clicked something on his wrist. “You’re like, thirty.”

“See, keep talking like that and your head and a fire extinguisher are gonna get real acquainted real fast,” warned Klaus, shaking a finger. 

The metal plating around the wrist he’d clicked flew backward onto a sudden rising platform, and then the arm parts flew backward as well, pulling apart until all that was left was a man. He was shorter than he was in the suit. Tony shook himself out. “There. Not as good as slow-mo rings, but magnets work just as well.”

Klaus squinted at him. “You’re fucking loaded, aren’t you.”

“Genius, too,” Tony winked, adjusting his cuffs. “Now. Stay out here, I called Fury already while you were talking to your ghosts and I’m going to go get some of the tools I need to measure the things Friday--my AI--was beeping at me about.”

Klaus nodded. “Okay. Gotta tell you, I’m like, totally chill, compared to my siblings.”

Tony looked at him oddly before going inside. 

“Okay, we’ve gotta get out of here,” said Ben, turning to face Klaus. His face had a worried look that worried his living brother. 

“What?” spluttered Klaus. “He seems nice! And rich, too.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Allison tried something she’d never tried before to get out of here, he tried to put you in a glass cage, and told you to stay out here in the cold. Also, we can’t trust every rich guy in a metal suit we’ve met!”

“This is the only rich guy in a metal suit we’ve met,” Klaus protested weakly. 

There was a pause as Ben looked at him with an incredulous look on his face. “I mean,” he said slowly. “I guess.” Suddenly, he shook his head, breaking the spell. “But that’s not the point! The point is we can’t trust him. And he had a ghost hanging with him, you know that’s a bad sign. Running is better than staying, and if we hear good things about him we can always come back.”

Klaus sighed, looking around as he ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. Okay, fine. What do we do to get out of here?”

“There’s a fire escape ladder over there.” Ben pointed. 

Running over to it, Klaus tested it. It seemed sturdy. He let go the latch and watched it fall to a platform, which had regular stairs all the way to the bottom. “Okay. Fine.” Klaus grabbed the sides and started to climb down. The door opened. 

Tony looked around, blinking. He had a little black box with wires coming out in his hand. “Klaus?” he asked, before spotting him perched on the ladder. 

“Ben!” Klaus whispered, concentrating. Ben made a noise somewhere between a groan of pain and a scream before he became outlined in blue, one of his tentacles grabbing Tony by the waist. Klaus hot-stepped it down the ladder, not looking but hearing Tony’s grunts of pain. When he dropped down onto the platform Klaus booked it onto the stairs, hurrying down as he shivered in the night cold. 

Ben materialized beside him when he hit the ground floor, panting. “Didya kill him?” asked Klaus, only mildly concerned. 

He shook his ghostly head. “No. No, I shoved ‘em back in before they could. Only let the one with suckers through, too. Not the spiky one, so he’s bruised but not bloody. Also unconscious.” They hurried into an alleyway, looking behind their shoulders. 

Klaus slipped into the night owl crowd of the city, shoving his hands into other people’s pockets like he’d done when he’d spent all his money on a giant poster of him dodging a badly photoshopped bullet with the title ‘that was a Klaus call’. His thin fingers made him a good pickpocket and New York was full of hurrying targets. It was a risky practice, but was probably his only hope if he wanted to sleep in an actual bed. 

Otherwise it was going to be a cold, cold night. 


	4. Edge of a Knife

Part of Diego’s less-than-useful power was his incredible sense of balance. He’d always relied on that part of him, the part that could jump and spin and flip without ever making him dizzy. He actually didn’t really know the concept of dizzy, only in childhood descriptions from his siblings. But he knew it now. Somehow, Five’s void made his head spin with the rest of him, made him know what his siblings had been talking about so long ago. But as soon as it had started, it was over, and Diego knew where the world was again. He landed on his feet, rolling into a superhero position, despite the slippery glass beneath him. Diego blinked, because he was on top of a building. It was raining, and he was glad for the cold drops anchoring him back into reality. The tops of the buildings he could see from where he was standing were cold and grey and foggy, but he couldn’t see much through the layer of dewy glass all around him. Diego jumped, but the glass was more than two times his height and he couldn’t climb the slick material. Couldn’t even see that well through the drops collecting on the inside and outside. Diego stepped back, tongue sticking out of his mouth. He threw a knife at the glass, hard as he could. It stuck, quivering, but it didn’t break the glass. Frustrated, Diego walked forward to pull it out. 

Behind him, Diego heard a gasp, causing him to pause with his hand half-reached out for his knife. The hairs on the back of his neck raised, and he turned. A kid. There was a kid, in a maroon hoodie and jeans with a full-face mask on, standing in the rain. The kid waved, stepping a little closer. Diego pulled out the knife and watched the kid carefully.

“Hi, I-I’m Spider-Man. My, uh…” he pointed to the building behind him. “My… actually, what do I call him? Uh, my mentor owns this skyscraper and like a couple months ago he told me all about these people with weird powers that keep showing up a-and--”

Diego blinked in confusion. The kid took a deep breath, the school logo on the front of his sweater going up and down. “Sorry. Lemme, lemme start over. Allison was here. Like eight months ago. And then Klaus. You’re one of them.” Spider-Man chuckled a little. “Because that blue portal thing was _sick._ ”

“Sorry, my siblings were here?” asked Diego.

The kid shifted as Diego slid his knife back in his holster, relaxing a little. This Spider-Man was damn weird, but he was also a kid, and Diego wasn’t of the opinion that kids were bad. Unless the kid was Five. That kid-old-man deserved some knives to the chest. 

“Do you--how many knives do you have?” he spluttered, looking Diego over. 

“Forty-nine,” he replied hesitantly. 

“Why not 50?” asked the kid. 

Diego shrugged. “I threw one and didn’t want to take it back?” The kid seemed satisfied with that answer.

Then his eyes widened, well, the huge eyes on his mask. Diego didn’t understand how that worked. “Wait, you’re Diego!”

“How do you know that?”

The kid nodded, furiously, up and down. “Yeah. Yeah, I watched the footage of Allison when she was here and when she was talking about Diego she did this.” He demonstrated a line from his ear to mid-cheek, mirroring Diego’s scar. 

“Yup. That’s me. What’s with the get-up?”

The kid blinked, but he seemed to take it in stride. “Standard for a superhero,” he answered proudly. That was new. New superheroes. New tech. 

“What year is it?”

The kid snapped his fingers. “Oh yeah. You’re from 2019, yeah? Well, it’s 2017.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” replied Diego slowly, looking down. The cogs in his brain turned at their turtle-like pace. It just didn’t make sense. There was new tech, new people, and he was in the past? 

“Different timeline, apparently. Some of the stuff here is different from the stuff there.”

“Huh. Listen, kid, I can’t just call you Spider-man, that’s stupid,” added Diego as he stabbed the glass again. It didn’t work, but there was a hairline fracture that gave Diego hope.

“Oh, I guess Peter’s fine,” replied the kid, walking hesitantly towards where Diego was aiming to throw another knife. 

“Right, Peter. I’m gonna get out of here, and then you’re going to take me to this Mr. Stark, alright?”

Peter shook his head. “I don’t think you can break that glass. Mr. Stark told me that he once trapped Loki in glass like that, but thicker, so unless you’re like, a god, I don’t think anything’s gonna work.”

“Well I’m going to try anyway.” Diego didn’t know of a ‘Loki’ or a ‘Mr. Stark’. He was confused, and he didn’t like being confused. Diego liked hard and fast things, like fighting and sex and arguing with his siblings. They’d hated his angry energy, when they had been kids. Reginald had called it ‘destructive’, which Diego attributed to his father being an abusive prick of an excuse for a father. “Who is this Mr. Stark you keep talking about? Is he the one who put me in here?” he asked. 

Peter nodded. “Billionaire, sort of my mentor, but he hasn’t really been returning my calls. Oh, he’s a superhero like me, ‘cept he’s in the big leagues.” 

A new superhero. Strangely, Diego was intrigued. “What powers?”

He shook his head. “Oh, none. Just a really weaponized robotic suit. I’ve got powers, though!”

“Really? You can’t, though,” said Diego, peering at him. “You’re not old enough.”

Peter huffed. “I don’t see what that’s got to do with it. I was bitten by a radioactive spider, and it gave me powers,” he explained. He put a careful hand on the glass, testing it gingerly. “Like this.” And then he put a foot on the glass, and his other hand, and then his other foot. Diego stumbled back as he climbed the extremely slick wall up until his head was about ten inches higher than Diego’s. “See?” he said eagerly. “Spider-Man.”

Diego huffed, incredulous. He put a hand on Peter’s hand, or where it was on the other side of the glass. “That’s incredible. Listen, I’m not dangerous.”

“You’re wearing forty-nine knives,” Peter pointed out. 

“Well, yeah, but I’m not gonna hurt anyone. Before the portal I was kind of in a sticky situation and I needed the knives, but I’m not gonna do anything with them now,” Diego explained, trying to sound convincing. 

“Okay…”

Diego gestured to the glass. “You can get me out of here!”

The kid scratched his chin, still stuck to the glass as the rain dripped around his hand. “I mean I guess I could,” he replied uncertainly. “But Mr. Stark wants to see what you guys are.”

“Please?” said Diego, pressing his hands to the glass again. “Please? I’m harmless, and I’m going to stay, I promise!” he lied. Anyone who was going to stick him into a cage was automatically on Diego’s naughty list. 

Peter looked at him. Diego couldn’t tell what he was thinking behind the mask, and that worried him. “No,” he finally replied, decisive. “I’m not going to, because if I do, Mr. Stark is going to yell at me.” Peter hopped off the glass and waved goodbye. “I came up here because I was eating lunch and Karen’s telling me that I need to go back to school, so bye!”

Diego pounded his fist on the glass. “Wait!” 

The kid winced, but then a string of white shot out of his wrist and onto the top of the tower, he leaped, and then he was gone. Diego let out an animalistic growl of frustration before taking out one of his knives and backing up to the furthest extreme of the glass cylinder. He threw it at the tiny crack he’d made, watched the crack expand. And he grabbed the knife and threw it about two feet to the side of the one he’d made. Then he threw them in a line, making a doorway of spiderweb cracks that reached out for each other with spindly arms. Eventually, the cracks met and the area he’d been hammering at broke. It didn’t shatter, it was too thick for that, but it broke into chunks and fell, clattering, onto the concrete. Diego stepped gingerly out into the whipping-wind rain and shielded himself from the bits of glass flying around. He bolted to the door, cursed when he found it was locked, and looked for another way out. 

A fire escape. Diego made quick work of the ladder and took the stairs two at a time. Then the kid flung himself out of nowhere in front of him. Diego was halfway down the stairs, but even then there were a shit ton of stairs to get down. The kid pointed his wrist at Diego. 

“Listen,” Peter said. “I have to go to English now, and I don’t wanna get there with a knife in my gut so you’re gonna have to come quietly.”

Diego moved like he was gonna go left around Peter but flipped into right at the last second, allowing him to get down a couple stairs before he was yanked back up by a sticky web on the back of his shirt. As he stumbled up the stairs against his will, he grabbed a knife and threw it. Honestly, it didn’t matter where he threw it as long as he wanted it to end up in the kid’s lower thigh. That was the mark least likely to have long-term damage. He heard Peter cry out and the webbing lost its pressure. He raced down the stairs, hardly panting. But three quarters of the way down the entirety of the stairs Peter dropped in front of him. A splotch of webbing covered his fresh wound, like a bandaid. “How did you throw that?” cried Peter. “It was nowhere near me.”

“How are you making that webbing?” Diego retorted. “Is it coming out of you? That’s disgusting.”

Peter waved a finger. “First off, no, I made it in a la--”

Diego put his hands on the slick railing, relying on his gloves to prevent slipping, and kicked Peter right in the chest. Or, tried to. Peter dodged, incredibly fast, and webbed Diego’s hand to the railing. He pulled, but the sticky white stuff was surprisingly strong. So with his other hand he whipped out a knife and cut the webbing away from the railing, which didn’t help with the fact his hand was completely obstructed now. Diego formed his webbed hand into a fist and punched his pursuer, but the quick little guy dodged again. That was alright, as it gave Diego an opening to dash down the rest of the stairs. 

“Hey!” shouted Peter, slinging down past Diego, trying to nab him and failing. “Come back here!” Diego, predicting Peter’s swing, pushed him to the left and watched him get tangled up in the metal poles of the stairs out of the corner of his eye. “Hey!” Peter repeated, untangling himself with surprising speed. 

Diego didn’t listen, instead jumping down the last flight and racing into the bustling crowd of New York. He ducked and weaved and nabbed a ridiculous hat off a random passer-by, pulling it onto his head. Eventually, Spider-Man whizzed by and didn’t notice him. Diego breathed a sigh of relief. 

Then Diego swallowed as he realised he was alone. Alone in a strange new city with no idea how to operate. Diego shivered, drawing his rain-soaked clothes closer to himself. He hadn’t had time to process, yet, and his brain was shoving those memories deeper and deeper into himself so he couldn’t. 

Everything. Everything had gone wrong. Detective Patch had died, he’d given up revenge and now he was stranded. Utterly alone with no semblance of a purpose. The apocalypse was in three years, and the Umbrella Academy probably didn’t even exist for him to fix it with. Nothing he’d worked towards had ever happened, not according to this world. Diego needed something to do, something to…

Patch. Detective Patch. Diego felt something like an idea rising up in his stomach as he looked out over the neon lights of the city, blurred by rain and exhaust. Diego was a creature of his training. Number One always took the lead, Number Two watched his six and protected the protectors. In some way, he resented that, wanted to be the one to kill the baddies, be the one in the center of attention. But some of his father’s training had been drilled way too deep in his head to be ignored. So that urge to protect, that urge to fight, was still strong, and Patch’s death was fresh in his head. And New York, no matter what timeline, was high on crime, right?

Surely the police officers of this fine city wouldn’t mind a new recruit…


	5. Planning

Three out of six in this world. And they had none of them. Fury was breathing down his neck, asking Tony if they were a threat or an asset or just a feature of the crazy world they called home. Peter kept asking curious questions, like a pesky fly that couldn’t be discouraged, and Tony was bored. So he decided to do his homework and find them. Yesterday, he had taken the security footage of the first four appearances, coupled it with the Stark satellite’s readings for that day, and created a sort of blueprint for what the portal looked like, felt like, read like, and even smelled like. The machine said it smelled like blue, whatever that meant. 

Time travel, dimension travel, they knew that already. Tony called up Dr. Strange to confirm that it was, in fact, not any known form of magic. It looked like magic. He’d worried the Doctor would hang up, given he’d called at one A.M, but he’d picked right up given he was in Tibet at the time. Strange said no, he’d never seen a portal like that. He also said it didn’t look like any alternate dimension he’d ever seen before, whatever that meant. 

Tony then figured he couldn’t _make_ the portals, but he could very well make something to _predict_ them. Bruce volunteered to help. He was mainly a radiation guy, but one of his PHDs was in particle physics. So they spent the afternoon and well into the evening building a machine, a sort of box with a screen. It hooked up to the dish on top of Avengers tower and detected that exact mixture of time travel and space travel in every possible time, including projections based on what time the four they’d already seen had shown up. And it worked, at exactly 11: 34 P.M, eastern standard time, three red blips where the three others had shown up (plus three more) blinked onto the screen. Bruce pointed to the nearest one excitedly. 

“That’s next week. Friday. That’s soon!” he said, glancing at Tony excitedly. Then his face fell into dread. “That’s really soon.”

Tony nodded, gripping the sides of the box, staring into that screen. “We have to prepare. A glass box isn’t working, and I honestly don’t think the double reinforced one I put out there is gonna work either. We just have no idea what to expect from these weirdos.”

Banner nodded, grabbing a spare piece of paper off their cluttered work desk. “It’ll have to be big, with a roof this time. Big enough for them to teleport in and not be cut in two,” he started, sketching a cylinder with a nearby pencil.

Tony walked around the table to the opposite side, nodding. “Make it strong, bulletproof. I’ve got some hulkbuster stuff that’ll work. That stuff is really durable too, so it should last until the next appearance.” The next blip was in three and a half months, and the furthest one away was in October, nine months after that one. 

“But then the walls won’t be clear.”

“That won’t matter,” protested Tony, shaking his head. “We know when the next person’s coming.” He tapped the drawing. “Put in an airlock so we can get in and out of it without letting them out. Also heaters, in case they come at night.” Banner did it.

“Security cams?” he asked, already drawing them in lightly.

Tony nodded. “Air-dispensed tranquilizer.”

Banner’s pencil stopped moving, and his head moved up to look at Tony with a quizzical expression. “They’re not animals, Tony.”

He scoffed. “Yeah, but they also keep attacking us and talking about an apocalypse. I feel like their feelings on the matter outweigh the lives of several billion people.”

Banner bit his lip and flipped the pen back and forth. “I guess. I just don’t want them feeling like we’re treating them like monsters. I know what that feels like,” he said quietly, his tone slightly judgemental. Banner’s first years as the Hulk were rough, to say the least, and Tony didn’t have the slightest idea of what that was like. Nobody did. However, Tony liked to ignore things he didn’t understand. He made a clicking thing with his mouth and grabbed Banner’s pencil, writing in a series of numbers that corresponded to a canister aerosol dispenser he’d made a while back. “What about a television screen?” suggested Banner after a hesitant pause. 

“Why?”

“In case we have to talk to whoever comes through but they’re too dangerous to be close to. Like that Allison girl, we don’t want to be in the same room as her or she’ll… you know. We could also attach Jarvis to it.”

His tongue stuck out of his mouth as he wrote it into the plans. “Nice addition. That all, you think?”

Banner nodded slowly, then faster as he finalized his decision. “I’d guess. All you have to do is build the thing.” He clapped Tony on the shoulder and walked to the coat rack, shrugging on his sweater. “See you tomorrow, Tony. Don’t go crazy,” he said, retreating with a wry smile. Banner gave a wave of goodbye before walking out the door. Tony sighed, staring listlessly out of the pitch-black window. 

“Night, Banner. Don’t go Hulk-y.”

Banner huffed with laughter as the door closed. Tony grabbed the half-finished drink he’d poured himself two hours ago and meandered over to the windows, staring at the helicopter pad. They’d had lots of adventures, the Avengers. Aliens. Gods. People who thought they were gods. 

Honestly, he’d thought he’d seen it all. And these mysterious people showing up on their balcony had been the least of his problems for a really long time. Just a little mystery they’d never had the cause to figure out. They knew the people were dangerous, obviously, but they hadn’t done anything destructive since their first meeting, hadn’t done anything to warrant even the slightest blip on their monitors. And honestly? Tony would have run the exact same way if he’d been told a billionaire wanted to do experiments on him. _Maybe I should work on my delivery when I tell them that,_ thought Tony, taking an absentminded sip of his drink.

But that word. That word Allison had written, the word that had shook her to her bones kept coming back to haunt Tony, like a cold dread creeping up behind him. Apocalypse. So many words for it. Doomsday. Armageddon. The end of the world. Somehow ‘apocalypse’ was the worst one. It implied a Biblical level of disaster, a lingering sense of pain and destruction that worried him. Tony sighed and took a drink, hissing as it burned his throat slightly. Pepper had said Allison was just running, and that they shouldn’t chase her, shouldn’t chase the rest of her family. But then Klaus had shown up. And then Diego. Three out of six. “Damn,” he said out loud to nobody, looking at the twinkling lights of New York as he swirled his drink thoughtfully. “Apocalypse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay guys, only like three more chapters until actual plot starts to happen, hang in there. I promise I'm trying, I'm just,,,, very slow because I absolutely cannot stand any grammatical errors. it's a problem, I'm sorry. also this chapter was a bit of a filler chapter cuz tbh I hate Luther
> 
> have patience (:


	6. Sign Me Up

One time, Luther had accidentally opened the airlock to the outside hub in his moon base. It wasn’t supposed to happen, there were supposed to be safety measures, but somehow he’d elbowed the wrong button or just hadn’t been paying attention and the airlock had opened with a near-silent _schunk_. The air immediately had started to rush out, dragging Luther along with it. He’d seen his death that day, stared with wide eyes as he scrabbled for a hold. The black abyss of space was empty, a pure absence of light that he’d thought he’d been desensitized to until he’d been forced to stare it down without a barrier. Then, fumbling, he’d slammed a button and taken a gasping breath, falling to his knees with a thud. Luther Hargreeves had survived. He always did.

He wasn’t sure he’d survive now. Because the empty void was back, but different. Five’s special brand of wormhole felt like the vacuum of space, choking him, ripping away his family, but it was lighter, more fluttery. Luther hated it anyway, hated the memories of the moon and of his mistakes flooding past.

When he finally dropped, he felt relief, and then dull pain in his hands and his knees. Luther scrambled to his feet, looking around. Where was Vanya? His heart started to thud. _Allison._

“Allison?” he called, even though there was nobody else in this… cylindrical cage. He looked up. The ceiling was made of grey metal. The walls were made of grey metal. The only break in the monotony was a black television screen and some fluorescent lights. Luther raced to the nearest wall and punched it, hard. It dented, but then a pleasing bell sound rang through the huge metal box. 

“I would advise you not to do that,” said a distinctly flat tone, accented with a British lilt. 

Luther spun, looking for the source of the voice. “Who are you? Where am I?”

“Yes, I would expect you to be confused. You are in New York, in 2017. But this is an alternate dimension than the one you are from. Now, now, please calm down--”

Luther punched the metal again. “Why am I in here?” he growled.

“Your siblings were rather averse to other methods of questioning Mr. Stark tried, so we had to detain you in a way that is not harmful but will ensure you stay where we can keep an eye on you,” said the voice, speaking rather quickly, but still without inflection. 

He swallowed, still looking at the thick metal that encircled him. “Okay… who are you?”

“Ah, yes, introductions. My name is Jarvis, and I am an A.I. That means--”

“Yes, I know what an A.I is,” interrupted Luther.

“Typically, introductions go both ways,” said the A.I carefully. Luther huffed. A clever A.I, like mom before her wires had started to fray.

“Luther. Hargreeves. You said my siblings were here. Where are they? Can I talk to them? Wait, did they put me in here?” His head turned panicked when he focused on the gut-wrenching thought that his siblings were angry enough to put him in a cage. That probably wasn’t the case, however, because where would they get an A.I named Jarvis? Keeping that in mind, he was still worried about what Vanya would do when she was separated from her family. Wait. Was he the only one ripped away by the void, or were all of them stranded?

The A.I hummed, drawing Luther’s attention away from his frantic thoughts. “Oh, yes. Allison came on July 18th, 6:31 A.M. Klaus at 10:09 P.M on October 1st. Then Diego on November 14th, 12:13 P.M. All eastern standard time, of course.”

“Then what day is it?” asked Luther, processing that. 

“Oh, apologies. It is December 2nd, 3:12 A.M. 2019. I have alerted Mr. Stark to your presence, though I think it will take him a while to get out of bed. He’s not a morning person.” Luther thought the A.I sounded amused, but that was probably just his brain messing with him. Even Mom had never sounded all that emotional. 

He nodded. “Right,” Luther sighed. He stood awkwardly for a moment before crossing his arms. “Who is this Mr. Stark?” he eventually asked. 

“I think Mr. Stark would like to make his own introduction, but I can give you the facts. Mr. Stark is more commonly known as Iron Man, a superhero.” A picture of what looked like a clunky robot in the shape of a man appeared on the television, flying. Luther watched interestedly. “He works with a team of other people with unique abilities called the Avengers. Together, they protect the world from anything and everything. From aliens to gods. Earth’s mightiest heroes, I believe they are called.”

“We had a team exactly like that,” Luther said, wistfully. “We were called the Umbrella Academy.”

“Oh? Tell me more.”

Luther knew this was a ploy for information, but they _were_ the ‘Earth’s mightiest heroes’... “Our family. Me and my five siblings, saving the world. We all had powers, and in our dimension, at least, powers are sort of a rarity.”

“What were your powers, then?” said a groggy voice, startlingly human. “Sorry, I’m Tony. Nice to meet you, forgive me if I don’t come in. One of your brothers gave me a hell of a beating and another stabbed a friend of mine.” The television flickered on and depicted a clearly sleep-deprived man sitting on a couch, rubbing his eyes. There were tables full of papers and electronic parts behind him.

Luther gave a tight smile towards the man, who was practically vibrating with interest despite his rude awakening. “Well,” he started, before hesitating. “What do you know? I mean, I just want to see what they told you.” Luther rubbed the back of his neck nervously. He didn’t want to upset this Tony, but he didn’t want to upset his siblings either. He’d kind of screwed it up in the theater… and with Vanya, back at the house… He couldn’t risk their anger again. 

Tony shrugged. “Allison wrote something down and I don’t remember her at all. I know she was here from the security footage,” he said, pointing to unseen cameras behind Luther’s view. 

“Wrote something down?” asked Luther, rising to walk closer to the television screen. 

He nodded. “Oh, yeah. Klaus said that she’s never been able to do that before. Oh, he talks to ghosts, yeah?”

Nodding, Luther bit his lip. 

“And his brother, Ben, has tentacles. The security cameras just glitched when he was throwing me around--”

“What? He attacked you?” spluttered Luther.

“Well, yeah, but--”

“I am so sorry,” apologized Luther. _Jesus. Can’t Klaus chill for one goddamn minute?_ “They’re just a bunch of drama queens. They don’t know how to-- how to respect authority.”

There was a pause and Tony just seemed to look at him. His expression was of one rendered speechless through a small surprise. “You are the first to apologize,” he said quietly. “Thank you. Anyway,” he cleared his throat, “Diego throws knives and holds his breath.”

Luther nodded. “Oh, yeah, that’s him.”

“What do you do?” 

“Super strength,” he replied, sighing.

Tony blinked. “Plus whatever’s going on with your…” he gestured towards Luther’s torso, “physique?”

“Long story.”

“Huh,” huffed Tony, still looking him up and down. Then: “Oh, right, Fury!” He clapped his hands once, then rubbed them together. “I never got the chance to explain, y’know, anything, to your siblings before they ran off--they are your siblings, right? They keep saying stuff about brothers and sisters.”

Luther nodded, folding his arms. “Adopted, but yeah.”

Tony snapped his fingers. “Yes. That’s what Peter thought, I’ll have to tell him he was right. No, no, I won’t do that, he’ll get all egotistical, think he’s the next Sherlock Holmes or some shit.”

“Who’s Peter?”

Tony shrugged. “A kid.”

“Your kid?” Tony didn’t seem like the type. 

He hurriedly made a negatory gesture with his hands. “No! No, God no. Just a kid.”  
“A… random kid?”

“We’re friends,” he spluttered. Then he winced. “Sort of? That sounds… yeah, he’s just a kid that I know. Anyway, Peter’s not important. What I was going to tell you is that we, the Avengers, are always sort of on the lookout for allies. Anybody who’s a friend is always on our list.”

“Right, makes sense.”

Tony nodded, leaning back in his chair. “So would you like to be on that list? I mean, the rest of your siblings sort of ran off before we could explain, so it’d just be you unless we can find them.”

Luther blinked. “W-What would happen?”

“Probably?” He shrugged. “You’d get a room on the helicarrier--boat in the sky where we put things we really like and also things we really don’t like--and you’d work for S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“What’s S.H.I.E.L.D?” asked Luther, feeling like an idiot. He was honestly kind of lost, but he’d gotten used to being lost over the years. 

Tony made a face, but then composed himself. “Like the government of heroics. Technically my bosses, but I’m richer than them so…”

“Oh. What would I be doing?”

“Capturing criminals. In this world, at least, we’ve got a lot of people with powers who use them to hurt other people. Doctor Doom, Green Goblin, Loki… y’know, come to think of it, all of our big enemies wear green… nope, the Red Skull. Oh, and Whiplash. That was my first nemesis.”

“I’d get to fight the bad guys? Help people? Like on… missions?” said Luther slowly. He really missed missions… 

“Oh, yeah. Basically. You’d need a superhero name, and we’d need to register you, but yeah,” replied Tony, seemingly nonchalant. His too-clever eyes watched Luther carefully, however, showing an intelligence that didn’t match his seemingly carefree disposition. “Did you have a superhero name, back in the academy of umbrellas or whatever?”

“Umbrella Academy,” corrected Luther immediately, still thinking it over.

“Yeah, yeah, sure… superhero name? I can’t just say ‘Luther’, that’s stupid.”

Luther rocked back and forth on his heels. “Spaceboy?” No. He wasn’t a kid anymore. It felt childish, a remnant of his useless time on the moon. A reminder of those packages he’d carefully wrapped, never opened. Pathetic. Luther felt that stinging pain again, that uselessness that he’d tried so hard to avoid, the sting of his father’s opinion. It burned like a brand, like a fresh tattoo on a fourteen-year-old’s skin. “No, not Spaceboy. Just Number One, something like that.”

Tony seemed not to notice the inner turmoil in his guest. “Why the numbers? Klaus said his name was like, number four or something.”

Luther nodded, feeling sudden excitement at this new prospect. Maybe he could do something useful. “Oh, yeah. We’ve all got numbers. All seven of us.”

A chime ran through the air. “You said you had five siblings, before,” interrupted Jarvis, slightly curious. 

Luther swallowed. “Well, Ben died. On a mission. And Vanya wasn’t with us, for a while. So she kind of-- replaced him, now? No. When we did all of our superheroing--nevermind. It’s--It’s a long story.” He tried to hide it, but Luther was sure his guilt was painfully obvious. Tony didn’t seem to react, however, instead maintaining a mildly interested expression. Luther took a deep breath, in and out. “It doesn’t matter. How do I sign up?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> favorite lines:  
> can't klaus chill for one goddamn minute? (no. no he can't.)  
> "oh, we had a team exactly like the avengers!" (uh. luther. y'all were massive fuckups)  
> "your son?" "GOD NO." (but actually yes)


	7. In Concert

When a person is about to commit suicide, for all intents and purposes, they seem like they’ve suddenly gotten better. They give gifts, make amends, seem more in control. Like the eye in a storm. Vanya figured the same thing had happened to her. She’d had nothing left to lose and no prospects to gain other than one, final, performance. It was the first one any of her siblings had seen for thirteen years. 

The very first time she’d played the violin for her siblings, she’d been shaky and the strings had squeaked horribly, but she’d been proud. 

Then Number One had to disagree. The best sibling, the one most often praised and given rewards. 

The first thing Vanya had heard after she’d finished her first performance?

_“What’s she gonna do with a violin? Play a stupid song to save the world? Useless.”_

Luther’s less-than-quiet whisper, in an aside to Allison. She’d seen her sister’s impulsive smile before the amateur actress switched on a disgusted frown. _“Shh!”_

Vanya had struggled to keep her composure. 

_“It’s not fair!”_ she’d screamed into Pogo’s shoulder, later that night. _“Why do they get to save the world? I won’t ever do anything that--that important! I’m useless, Pogo…”_ That one sentence had been crushing, had set the stage for the rest of her years in that house.

But Ben, Klaus, and Diego, despite Luther, had been ecstatic. Klaus had a hobby of singing, Ben had been experimenting with the drums and Diego’s first love had been the guitar, so they’d thought about forming a band, the Prime-8s. _“It’ll be so fun… we can have something just to ourselves!”_ cried Ben, smiling his brightest smile.

 _"Oh, yeah, Ben. I’ll be the next Michael Jackson!”_ Vanya recalled Klaus striking his best Michael Jackson pose and attempting to moonwalk on the carpeted floor. She’d collapsed into giggles.

 _“I dunno about that, but anything to get away from dad is a good idea in my book.”_ Diego had grumbled, but he’d been grinning through the doubts. Allison had supported them, but she’d been wrapped up in her obsession with acting at the time so she hadn’t really paid attention. Number Five had laughed at the band idea.

 _“Father won’t ever let you do it!”_ he’d said, snickering. But he had loved to listen to Vanya play solos on the violin. Helped him think, he’d said, like white noise but more interesting. Vanya had just been happy to be useful, and he’d given her such wonderful compliments… before. Before he’d left her alone in a house that suffocated.

That started the decline, like a line of emotional dominos. Ben died. Then Klaus, who had been leaning into being a drug addict, fell face-first into joints and powders. Then Allison had gotten distant, causing Luther to become even more of a daddy’s boy. A shithole family wrapped in a thin veneer of fame, money, and the supernatural… 

  
  


Vanya didn’t know what was happening. Her eyes had flown open, brown once again, and she’d felt hands around her body very briefly before she was ripped away. All she felt was blue around her, blue that didn’t make sense, blue that tingled and swirled in a dizzying vortex. 

Then Vanya gasped, breathing in fresh air, and she hit the ground face-first. Vanya rolled to her side, groaning, and then blinked in surprise. The sky was made of metal. The walls were made of metal. She rose to her feet, wobbly, looking for a door in the cylindrical cage. “Allison?” she whispered, tapping on the metal wall closest to her. It didn’t make a sound other than the tiny ting of her fingernails. An echoing sound that made her heart start to pick up, made her eyes start to dart around in panic. 

And then it clicked. Someone had known she was coming, someone had expected her, had put her in this cage. Vanya began to hyperventilate, began banging on the wall with her fists. “Let me out!” she screamed, panting. She felt that white glow begin to bubble inside her, but she held back.

Vanya heard a beep from behind her, and a previously unnoticed television screen buzzed to life, a spot of color in the grey walls. “Vanya,” he said, sounding nervous. 

“Luther,” whispered Vanya, marching to the television screen, hands in fists. 

He gave a tight smile, holding up his hands. “Hello, Vanya. I know you might be angry--”

“Let me out,” she interrupted, shaky. 

Luther seemed to pause. He bit his lip and shifted from side to side, looking at something past the camera. Eventually, he shook his head. “I can’t, Vanya.”

“Let me out or I’ll level this building.” Her voice was stronger now, despite the inner turmoil. She didn’t want to, didn’t want to cause any more destruction, but the grey walls seemed to start to close in on her, suffocating her, shutting her out. It felt like every moment of her childhood years. “I don’t want to,” she added, vibrating with tension. “I really don’t want to, Luther.”

Luther looked down, taking a deep breath in through his mouth. “No,” he finally said, sounding just the tiniest bit unsure.

Vanya felt anger burning through her body, making her ears start to roar with rage. “No?” she asked, voice taut like the strings on her violin. “Luther, please-”

“You can’t get out. It’s impenetrable. A-And you’re too dangerous, Vanya, I want you to understand that,” he pleaded. “We’re in an alternate dimension, Five tried to time travel us away in order to get away from the Apocalypse but he botched it and everything’s different now.”

She swallowed, looking down at her fidgeting hands. When she’d been going to the theater, her hands had been steady. She’d been decided.

Vanya’s eyes flickered to the screen. “Too dangerous?” she repeated back. “When we were kids you called me useless.”

He winced. “Well, I mean, I didn’t know--”

“What? Didn’t know my value? You’re such an asshole, Luther,” she spat. “You only see importance in the world through power. Now that I have more of it, more of it than you or-or anyone in our family ever had, even Dad, you finally respect me,” Vanya scoffed, feeling the power knot up inside her. The cage began to creak, like a tree in the wind. “I respected you, when we were kids, because you were my _brother,_ not because of some meaningless numbers! You _never_ did the same for me. You only see people for our use in a mission or how high up we are on the food chain.” Her voice was angry, vibrating with the tension of thirty years of pent-up misery and loneliness.

Luther looked down, an indiscernible expression wobbling on his face. Then his jaw set, and he locked eyes with his sister, determined. “You blew up the world. _You_ did that, not me, like a--like a child having a temper tantrum.”

“Stop.”

He shook his head, eyes angry. “No. I admit I let you down. I admit I have faults, Vanya. But you have faults too,” he said, half-commanding, half-pleading.

Vanya gritted her teeth, clutching her hands to her head. The White Violin inside her began to hum, something low, like Sibelius… “You trapped me. Again.”

“Don’t act like you wouldn’t have killed me otherwise, sister.”

“Sister?” Vanya spat. “Sister. I was always the lesser sister to you, wasn’t I?”

“This isn’t about Allison,” Luther said defensively.

Vanya let out a dark chuckle, even as she felt a well of uncontrollable energy building inside her. She wanted to let it free, wanted to be calm again. She was nearing that, like a leaf in a whirlpool, slowly spinning closer to being sucked under. Once she got close, she would be gone. “It’s always about Allison, and you, and everyone else!” Vanya growled. “And just as it was about me, for once, for one goddamn time, you fucked it up.” She saw Luther wince at her use of language. “ _My_ performance, _my_ time to… shine.”

“You were going to end the world, Vanya. We had to do something.”

“No!” Vanya shouted, still clutching her head. She was spinning closer to that calm white abyss, she knew. And the human part of her, the Vanya part of her, didn’t want to. “I wasn’t going to blow up the moon until you assholes showed up.” Finally, she understood what her siblings had been talking about when they’d told her how their powers felt. Like a ball of throbbing energy in her gut. When her siblings had been little, they hadn’t been able to control their powers. Allison, before she tied her powers to rumors, would say something offhand and reality would start to change against her will. Five would teleport in his sleep, the powered kid’s version of sleepwalking. Luther would crush his pencils and Ben would suddenly be enveloped in tentacles when he got upset. This felt like that, that helplessness she’d seen at Ben panting, shoving his monsters deep inside him while the rest of them watched, unable to help. Except it was her unable to shove it back in, this time. 

"Vanya--"

She screamed and the walls ripped apart. The metal curled and the TV screen shattered. Vanya felt herself glowing, floating, expression blank. It felt like an out-of-body experience. She saw Luther inside the window, didn’t care about the rest of her surroundings, only that her brother was there, slack-jawed in front of a camera. Vanya felt her fists begin to glow, concentrated on Luther against her will. It had felt like this, last time, when she had been slowly killing her siblings. Like a loss of emotion, a scream inside a soundproof cage.

_Let it out._

Vanya, in the prison in her head, gritted her teeth. 

_No._

She began to scream as she tried to hold it in, but the White Violin was persistent. It wasn’t enough. _She_ wasn’t enough. A beacon of energy shot out of her chest. At the last second the White Violin was pushed out and Vanya, in a burst of care for her brother and the world in general, wrenched the energy skyward. She pushed the light up, up into the clear blue sky. 

Then her eyes fluttered. Then her body hit the ground. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this might sound weird but I hope you're frustrated.  
> a friend of mine read this stuff so far and they said that it was good writing, but it just didn't have any emotion. which. y'know. it's the beginning, the intro, it's not supposed to have,,, feeling,,,  
> but I hope this had,,,, feeling,,, 
> 
> also cliffhanger? I've never done that before!!


	8. Unshaken

Diego didn’t try to look for his family, and yet he saw them everywhere. When he went to the gym and spotted a hulking man with blonde hair, his heart had stuttered, out of suprise or anger or some sort of emotion that made blood rush in his ears. It hadn't been Luther. He saw Allison in the streets, saw that bright smile and heard her voice chattering away. He’d always thought that magnetic personality was somehow connected to her powers, but deep down he knew it wasn’t. Allison was just good with people, better than he’d ever been. 

One notable time he’d been in a coffee shop and a kid walked in, bold as brass, and ordered a single black coffee for himself. Diego peered at him closely, but for different reasons than the other patrons of the shop. It hadn’t been Five, hadn’t even been close, but Diego had hoped, despite himself. He hated it, but he’d give a whole lot to ruffle that bastard’s hair, to chew him out for screwing up the jump. Diego steered clear of anything violin related, but that was hard with all the performers on the streets. Walking through Central Park one day, he’d heard what he swore was the song Vanya had been playing when she’d ended the world. That had turned a good day into one of the worst. 

Being a police officer was good. He’d had to forge some birth documents, plus retake his driver’s test, but he felt like he fit in now. Chief Wizel, known as ‘the wise’ to her friends, was nice enough. She’d actually been the one to take a chance on Diego, signing his paperwork herself. 

He’d made friends, gotten a crappy little apartment with two roommates. Forgot.  Mostly.

Because there were some things that just couldn’t be shaken. Every time they got a call about a skinny white druggie overdosing, he’d go into a panic. His knuckles would go white on the steering wheel. His jaw would clench. No more jokes until they got to the scene. His partner, Carter, knew something was up when he got quiet. He asked, tentatively, at first, but Diego wouldn’t tell, only growled out some short rebuttal that he was fine. Carter learned not to ask.

Diego would sink into relief when they’d arrive and it wasn’t Klaus. 

But then, those nights, he’d stay up all night, looking at his dingy ceiling and wondering. Where were they? He was trapped in a cycle of wanting to find them but worrying about what they would say. Mostly he was worried about Vanya. His brain would spiral into fears about the apocalypse, and maybe that it was happening, or if those guys with gas masks in the theater would come back… 

So he did nothing. Nothing at all. He enjoyed his new life. Was happy, sometimes. The action of being a police officer helped take the edge off, but there was just something missing. 

A big family-shaped hole in his life.

Diego got up in the morning and stretched, before pulling on a t-shirt and jeans. He glanced at himself in the mirror and banged his still-beeping alarm clock. Diego grabbed a bagel off the counter on his way out of the door, sticking it in his mouth as he shrugged on his police jacket. The subway was packed, as per a Thursday morning. Diego hung onto a pole and tried not to get wedged between Mr. I-Smell-Like-Beans and little Miss Dozens-of-Rickety-Bones-Inside-a-Meat-Cage. Diego hopped off on his stop, about two blocks away from the police station, still munching on his bagel. It was the most efficient way to get to the station, but not the most comfortable. For one, he could see the Avengers tower every step of the way. 

He tried to ignore it, but it was like a big metal block on his happiness. The thing just reminded him of his family, of the way he’d run from Peter. It had been the best decision, considering both Klaus and Allison had run as well, but he definitely wondered what would have happened if he had stayed. For instance, he could see the metal cage Stark and his billions of dollars had built, looking for more of Diego's kind. There hadn’t been any PSAs about looking for any of his siblings, though, so he didn’t think any of them besides Klaus and Allison had shown up. Diego didn’t look at the building, refused to even acknowledge it for six blocks. Before Diego could get to the station, however, he stopped. The hairs on the back of his neck raised, and other citygoers jostled into him as Diego stood stock-still on the sidewalk. 

He  _ felt  _ it. He felt  _ her.  _

The electricity in the air. The way gravity seemed to get lighter, just slightly. He wouldn’t have recognized it if he hadn’t experienced it before. Diego looked up just in time to see a white-blue light shoot out of the destroyed cage. 

Diego bolted towards the light. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry that was so short my dudes. writer's block's been a bitch. that and I'm furiously working on a different project because my interests bounce around like a goddamn ping-pong-ball. thanks for being patient


	9. Vacation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha two hundred and ten people have left kudos on a work written by a fourteen year old haha  
> (thank you guys it means so fucking much)

When Allison had been a kid, she’d been alone. Nothing like Vanya’s special brand of alone, or Five’s forty-five years of isolation, but she’d been alone nonetheless. Trapped between Luther and Diego’s constant bickering and Klaus’s panic attacks, she’d always been the one to clean up. The one to comfort and bandage, hide secrets none of them wanted Dad to find, the one to whisper goodnight and explain things to the press. Her brothers didn’t realise what messes they made.

One evening, around midnight, Allison and Klaus had been sitting together on Allison’s bed. A common arrangement when Allison got lonely and Klaus needed someone to be with, to get away from his ghosts. Klaus was high out of his mind and Allison was brushing her hair in the mirror, angry strokes that matched her eyes. 

_ “I just don’t understand him!” she’d snapped, meaning their father.  _

_ Klaus let his head roll back on the wall, eyes blissfully closed. “Oh, just because he didn’t give you point on that one mission doesn’t mean you’re not still his favorite. Besides Luther, but that’s just because he--” _

_ “It’s not that.” _

_ His eyes opened just a crack, peering at her through the fringe of his hair and the mirror. “Whaddaya mean?” _

_ “He…” Allison sighed, resting her hands on the desk. “I… I asked him if we could go on a trip, all six of us. Vacation. To get away from the house. You know, like in books.” _

_ “We went to Paris six months ago,” Klaus pointed out, taking another drag out of his cigarette. Allison would have been concerned that Dad would smell it, but he was too focused on some project in his office to ever venture into her room. Plus, Mom, who did venture into her room, couldn’t smell.  _

_ Allison scoffed, looking at her hands clutching the edge of her desk. “Yeah. To fight the Eiffel tower. Another goddamn mission. I meant… I meant like a real vacation! Just for fun. And he--” she gestured wildly “he just dismissed me out of hand! Like I wasn’t even a concern. He told me… what did he say…” Allison smacked her lips, staring furiously into her own eyes in the mirror, scrutinizing every aspect of herself, wondering why she wasn’t good enough for a reward. “Oh yeah. He said: ‘Why should I give you what everyone else has, when you have everything they don’t?’” She chuckled darkly. “God. The… the audacity!” _

_ Klaus sighed, a deep sound that filled the sudden silence of her bedroom. “Yeah. He’s a prick.”  _

_ Allison felt a burst of incredulous humor in her chest, and she looked up to the ceiling, chuckling a little. “Yeah.” _

_ “Listen, Ally.” Klaus extinguished the cigarette. “You can’t make him understand you. We’ve tried. He’s more machine than Mom. So why bother trying to understand him? Besides. A little mystery in the world is a good thing, even if it is infuriating. So tolerate him, next time he’s all vague and mysterious--make life more interesting for yourself. Like…” he trailed off. “Like you’re the main character in a movie. You know? Make your life more interesting, good or bad, so your viewers aren’t disappointed.” _

_ Allison looked at herself in the mirror, biting her lip. “You are as high as hell, Klaus.” _

The words stuck with her. Maybe those drug-addled phrases had implanted themselves in Allison’s head somehow, made her think about acting, made her more tolerant of twists and turns. Or maybe that had just been one moment of many that made her into what she was today. 

Today, she was staring out of a taxi cab window, blinking at the barely-there rain accompanying the roiling clouds above. She was on her way to work, one of her two jobs. Bartender by night, assistant at a news station by day. It was tiring work, but she’d gotten her voice back (mostly) about a month ago and when it got to be too much she rumored herself to full health. Her coworkers wondered why she never got sick. 

Some days she wished she didn’t do it, wished for an easier life or a simpler time where she didn’t hide from any mention of Tony Stark or Pepper Potts.

Allison jerked back from the window when a red blur passed by. Then she peered out of the back of the still car, which was trapped by traffic. Spider-Man. She’d read about him, she subscribed to the Daily Bugle and several other newspapers with more egalitarian views on the vigilante, and she knew he normally operated in the evenings or at night, not in the morning. Allison unbuckled and clambered slightly over the back of the car seat, squinting at the blur through the back window. Spider-Man was heading towards Avengers tower. Before he got there, light exploded from the building, a white beam shooting into the sky. 

Jaw agape, Allison felt something. Felt something in her gut, the bit that could change things, distort reality, pull with huge force to that white light. She let out an involuntary grunt. 

“Everything… alright back there?” asked a hesitant voice from behind her, the cab driver. 

“Um…” Allison was still in shock. She’d assumed she was the only one. The only one to survive. But that instinct to fix things snapped her back to her senses. “Listen, listen,” she said, turning suddenly. She fumbled for her wallet, hurrying before the light changed and traffic started up again. Handing him the money with shaking hands, either from excitement or fear, Allison didn’t know, she pried open the door, suddenly assaulted by the cold air of New York. 

He took the money that was handed to him, but his eyes were confused. “What are you--”

She slid out of the door, blue shoes slipping slightly on the damp concrete in her rush. Allison slammed the door shut, before weaving past the next lane to the sidewalk, bumping into pedestrians as she hurried towards the tower. 

_ Oh God,  _ she suddenly realised with a start, quickening her pace.  _ It’s Vanya. Oh, God. It’s Vanya. _

Thoughts of cut throats and haunting music and white eyes came crashing into her adrenaline-addled brain. White suit and blue light, windchimes and knives in a body…  __

Allison ran anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's that? she's doing another thing with flashbacks and all the siblings seperately, poorly disguising her writer's block?


	10. A Hero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> diego again :|

Diego got there in record time, but it still wasn’t enough. Cars were crowded outside of the building, pointing at the wrecked remains of the metal cage, holding up hopeful phones to catch footage of the light if it happened again. Diego pushed through them roughly, hoping against hope the rest of his police force would get there in time to get them away. He didn’t have a phone, didn’t have any way to tell them to, but Chief Wizel was smart, she’d lived through Sokovia. Diego banged on the locked front doors, joining three others, two reporters and what was probably a conspiracy theorist. “Hey!” he shouted, glaring at the security cameras. “Stark! Peter! I’m back, motherfuckers, open this goddamn door before she blows the whole thing down!” 

No response. He didn’t really expect one, but it still felt defeating. He banged another fist on the glass and growled out a curse of frustration. The poor receptionist on the inside was frantically calling on her phone, panicked face contorting as she shrieked. Diego huffed helplessly, banging again on the glass, pleading silently that Stark might notice. 

“Come on,” he growled, and fumbled for the knife he’d sewn into his police jacket. The conspiracy nut backed off, holding up his hands, when the shiny metal was revealed. The reporters were still banging on the door. Diego hefted the knife, and one of them did a double take. 

“Woah woah woah,” he said, stumbling away from the door, guarding the other reporter with his left arm. 

Diego didn’t pay him any attention once he was out of the way, instead motioning for the receptionist behind the glass to move. Her eyes widened, and she scrambled out of the way, blonde ponytail bobbing.

He threw the knife. It had been a while since he’d used the power, but it didn’t feel difficult, just a little rusty. The knife flew through the glass, shattering it in one fell swoop. The door was fragile, unlike the glass that had been around him when he’d first arrived. He stepped gingerly over the glass, glaring at the gawking reporters. “Where’s the elevator?” he asked the shaken receptionist. She pointed. 

Diego ran, pressing the button for UP impatiently. To his surprise, it dinged open almost immediately, and he slipped inside with no trouble. Diego jammed another button, the one marked _Heli,_ and took a mental tally of the knives he’d hidden in his outfit. He had two in his coat and four in his boots, but honestly Diego could use anything in a pinch. Knives were just his specialty. The glass of the elevator shot upward, and Diego glanced down at the bustling city, sighing in relief when he saw police lights and the crowd being pushed away from the tower. Who knew what would happen next? All those innocent lives below the tower. Diego had to stop it. He had to. Calm down Vanya or else. 

Diego readied his fists, not trusting his bare hands to handle his knives without cutting them. The elevator number reached 112. 

It opened, revealing the inside of the bar room scene Diego had seen from outside the glass when he’d arrived, packed with people, shouting and arguing. He saw multiple people in black gear, a redheaded woman, some guy in a suit, and… Luther. Kneeling on the ground, back to Diego. 

Next to Vanya. Unconscious. 

Diego, who already hated these black-clothed people who _stank_ of authority, lunged forward to his ginormous brother sitting about fifty feet away, intending to chew him out for God-knows-what. 

A foot to the chest stopped him in his tracks, sending him sprawling, the floor slamming into his back. He rolled backwards, instinctively, and sprang to his feet. The redhead woman. Standing in his way, with an unimpressed eye and perfect posture. “Who the hell are you?” snapped Diego, and the man in the suit turned from where he was arguing with one of the guys in black. 

“You!” said the suit man, mouth slack in surprise. His eyes narrowed, mouth going to a distasteful frown. “The one who stabbed Peter in the leg.”

“That’s me!” Diego said, looking over Luther’s broad shoulders to see if he could catch a glimpse of his sister. He couldn’t, so he went back to the matter at hand. “Let me through,” he ordered the redhead who’d kicked him. 

Her hair swung around her chin as she shook her head. “No.”

Diego pushed past her, or tried to. She grabbed his arm in a move he’d learned in his childhood, on one of the Russian wrestling programs Mom had installed. He automatically did the countermovement, twisting his head under her shoulder to bring his knee into the small of her back. She stumbled forward, recovering to stare at him, shocked. Diego didn’t have time to dwell on that, instead moving past her to rush to Luther, who hadn’t noticed the commotion. When he skidded to Vanya, however, his brother looked up, innocent baby face morphing into incredulous surprise. “Diego?” he spluttered. 

Diego rolled his eyes. “That’s my name,” he muttered, looking down at the unconscious Vanya in Luther’s arms. “What the fuck did you do to her?” His voice was exactly as disgusted as he wanted it to be. 

“Do something?” said Luther, brow beetling. “Why would I have to _do_ something? Why do you always assume it’s my fault?” God, his voice was whiny. 

Diego scoffed, running a hand through his slightly-too-long-hair. “Uh, maybe because it was your fault last time? And because Vanya’s the one who’s unconscious, not you?”

“Woah, woah, woah,” said the man in the suit from behind Luther, spreading his hands in the classic _calm down_ gesture. Diego looked up at him, unimpressed until he realised he’d seen this man’s picture in the papers. Tony Stark. Iron Man. The guy who owned this tower. “Hold up. Luther--” he pointed to Luther “--told us that the apocalypse had been some guy named Harold’s fault.”

Luther held up a placating hand, glancing nervously between Diego and Stark, afraid Diego would tell Stark about their exploits in their world. “Wait a minute, Diego--”

“Uh, no,” interrupted Diego, already angry. Even if there was a good reason why he shouldn’t spill the beans, Diego would do it just to spite his brother. “No. It was your fault, and it was Dad’s fault, and it was those commission idiot’s fault. It was everybody’s fault except me. All I did--”

“You ran off on your own to avenge your girlfriend, Penelope, or whatever!” shouted Luther, voice a growl in his ape chest. 

“Her name was Patch, idiot!” he yelled back, feeling that same frustrated anger he’d felt whenever he’d argued with his brother in their youth. He stood, trying to tower over his normally huge brother, fire in every line of his body. God, Luther was an oblivious idiot. “And that was important. She’d been murdered, for God’s sake! And you place your obvious daddy issues as more important than--”

“Daddy issues?” Luther parroted, standing up with him, leaving the asleep Vanya lying between them, a white and brown lump on the ground. “Excuse you? He’d just died.”

“Yeah, and a good thing too,” Diego snapped. “He was an abusive son of a bitch and he sent you to the goddamn moon, Luther. If anyone should be glad he died, it’s you.”

Luther’s face heated. “He may have made some mistakes, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t raise us--”

“Raise us?” laughed Diego. “Raise us. He did a shit job of it too. An addict, an actress, a depressed bomb, and a crybaby. Oh, let’s not forget one of us is dead, too! What an impressive track record, six out of seven survived his parenting. Plus Five, who’s even more fucked up than you.”

“What are you, then?” Luther yelled back, towering over Diego, who began to make his mental tally of his knives again. “What are you? An addict, an actress, a crybaby, an old man, a ghost, a bomb, and…”

“A hero,” said Diego, pushing a finger into Luther’s chest. “The only one out of all of us that--”

“A hero?” scoffed Luther, looking angry beneath all that fluff. “A hero. You’ve done nothing. You stabbed a kid in the leg and ran away, leaving me to pick up the pieces. Like you always do. I’m the one left behind, all the time. And you’re not a hero, Diego! You’re just as messed up as the rest of us.”

Diego stuttered. God, he hadn’t stuttered in so long. The sudden silence of the room came rushing towards him, the shocked gapes of those people with guns, the awkward sliding glances from Tony, the impassive stare of the redhead. He swallowed, pointing a finger at his brother. “Y-You…” he said, all his fire gone. Everyone’s heads snapped up when the elevator bell dinged, and Diego breathed a sigh of relief before his chest tightened in surprise. 

Allison. Allison emerged, in a yellow dress and blue shoes, hair frazzled as she skidded into the quiet room. For a moment, Diego wondered how he’d ever mistaken anyone for his sister in the street. Her brightness was unmistakable, even in her worried expression. “Allison!” cried Luther, stumbling to her. To Diego’s disgust, her eyes lit up when they found her brother (her _brother_ ) in the room. 

She gasped, running towards him. The redhead moved to stop her, but hesitated. Diego scoffed in his head. Of course Allison wasn’t perceived as dangerous, and Diego was, even though he was wearing his fucking police jacket. Allison met Diego’s eyes over Luther’s shoulder as they hugged, and Diego gave a little grudging wave at her elated smile. Then the smile fell, like a plate toppling off a table. In their youth, pretty much anyone in their family would have done anything to prevent that shocked and angry expression. Diego looked at his feet, where Allison’s gaze was fixed. Vanya. 

Allison pushed her way out of Luther’s probably crushing hug to run to Vanya, pushing past the people in black to skid to her knees in front of Vanya. She glared at Diego, opening her mouth to accuse something. He pointed at Luther. “It was him. I just got here.”

Allison whipped back around. “Is that true?” she asked, voice gravelly and hoarse.

Stark’s eyes widened even more than they were before; he looked thoroughly overwhelmed. “Wait, you can talk?” he said, squinting at her. She blinked, seemingly just realising he was there. 

“Oh. Tony,” she said, shoulders shifting awkwardly. “Hi. Yeah. These are my siblings.”

“I know,” he said, clearly trying to keep it together. “Damn. If I’d known all it would take to get you all back would be to put a giant beacon in the sky, I would have done it earlier.”

Allison frowned. “Wasn’t that Vanya?”

“Yeah,” said Luther, shifting a little. He glanced at Stark, and Diego groaned inwardly, knowing Luther’s daddy issues were likely in full force between him and this Stark guy. “I… I tried to talk with her,” he said quickly. Diego raised a sceptic eyebrow, folding his arms. 

“What did you say?” asked Allison, brushing back Vanya’s hair off of her forehead, whose head was held lovingly in Allison’s lap. Diego recognized that filial concern she’d always had, even as a kid. Whenever they’d gotten into fights, as kids, Allison had always been the one first to apologize and try to fix things. Which was good, as Allison had gotten into a lot of fights, given her fiery temperament. “When you talked to her, what did you say?” she demanded at Luther’s silent, inarticulate pause. 

“I… I asked her not to blow up the world. That’s all. And… I asked her to cooperate,” he insisted. “But that’s all! She--she was the one to-” he gestured to the ruined metal plating scattered outside the glass doors to the helipad. “-to blow up her containment--”

“Containment?” spluttered Allison, clutching her sister closer. “You put her in a cage?”

“That’s what I said!” cried Diego, throwing up his hands. That hadn’t been what he’d said, but he’d been thinking about it, and ganging up on Luther was one of his favorite pastimes. 

“Hold on, hold on,” said Stark, putting a hand in either direction. “Listen. We were the ones to build the box, not him. Okay?” he said placatingly. “Wasn’t his fault. And nobody got hurt, unless you count my bank account, which can take it.”

“He still condoned it!” insisted Diego, pointing at Vanya. “Which is exactly what he did to her last time!”

Luther stuttered, and Diego felt a wicked rush of satisfaction at the sight. Luther, struggling with the thing that had plagued him all his life. 

“Listen, listen,” pleaded Stark, voice almost a shout. He took in a deep breath, glancing at each of the intruders with a placating gesture. “Everybody just… just calm down. All this yelling won’t solve anything.”

The siblings looked at each other. 

And then the real yelling began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys I finally have the Plot worked out!! I'm pumped but also school's been kicking up so it'll be a hot second before the next chapter :/ like a week or so


	11. I Don't Know What You're Talking About

“Was your card… the king of hearts?” said Klaus, grinning at the handsome man holding a card, dressed in a flattering wollen blue coat that matched his eyes. Ben rolled his eyes behind the man’s shoulder as those handsome features morphed into shocked ones. 

“Yes!” the handsome man cried, turning the card around and handing it to Klaus. The considerable crowd around the two of them clapped in astonishment. 

Klaus tipped his cheaply made glittery top hat and gestured for donations to the crowd. “Anything you have helps a struggling magician,” he said, shaking the hat as he spun around. Many hands eagerly put in fives and tens, and one notable twenty. The crowd soon dispersed, having already seen Klaus perform two or three tricks. Ben sidled up beside him as the handsome man put in a five, blushing at Klaus’s wink. 

“I still feel like this is cheating,” muttered Ben. 

“Cheating, shmeating,” said Klaus happily, adjusting the colorful green boa he wore for performances. He nodded to the last of the stragglers and meandered his way behind the fountain. “We’re just making the most of our resources,” he explained, rifling through the bills and coins in his hat. “That’s all.”

“Fine. Whatever,” sighed Ben, sitting on the concrete bench around the fountain with his knees up. “You work on that coin trick much yet?” he asked, though he knew Klaus hadn’t. 

“Why should I practice regular magic when I have you, Casper?” Klaus teased, leaning a foot on the bench. Ben had been a godsend for Klaus’s income. With Klaus’s pizazz and sheer hustle ability and Ben’s ghostly powers, they’d put together a pretty decent set. They’d actually gotten so good at their act that a scout or something had once approached them on the street to see if Klaus wanted to be on a TV show. Klaus had considered it, he really had, but the appealing thought of fame was drowned out by the horrible thought of responsibilities. That and Ben pointed out Stark would be looking for him, and being on TV was a likely way to get caught again. Plus, if Klaus was going to approach Stark it would be better to do it on his own terms, of his own free will, or so Ben said. Klaus put his cards back into their box and stuck them in his pocket. Then he began to fold up the bills he’d earned, counting the amount as his quick fingers flipped through them. 

Ben sighed again. He did that a lot. “List--” he broke off, and Klaus hummed, still focused on his bills and coins. He’d made quite a killing on this one. Maybe the new trick where Ben pulled the cards out of his pocket had helped? Klaus glanced up when Ben didn’t continue. His ghostly eyes were fixed on something in the distance, wide with shock. 

“What?” chuckled Klaus, looking behind him. All he saw was that dreaded Avengers tower, smoking a little. But that was nothing unusual, the tower often did strange things. 

“You didn’t see?” he whispered, standing. “Vanya. It was Vanya.”

“What?”  _ No. Nonononono. _ That was bad. “No it wasn’t. It wasn’t Vanya,” Klaus said quickly, swallowing. Klaus looked between the tower and his brother. 

Ben shook his head, eyes still fixed on the tower. “It was her,” he said determinedly. “She just sent up a huge beam of energy. She’s here.”

After taking a moment to digest that information, Klaus groaned, collapsing onto the bench. He covered his eyes. 

“Klaus,” growled Ben. “Come on. Come on! You have to go help! She’s going to--to end the world!”

He groaned again, arms flopping to the sides. “We had such a good thing going,” he complained. “Why does the end of the world have to inconvenience me?”

“You… don’t you see how much it matters?” cried Ben, above him. Klaus squeezed his eyes even tighter closed, refusing to look at Ben’s probably convincing face. “Klaus. Klaus, if you don’t do this, everything might go! Everything! Your shitty apartment, that chinese place you like, you-- they’ll all blow up if you don’t go.”

“You don’t know that!” protested Klaus, weakly, opening his eyes to look at Ben’s plaintive face. He flinched away, turning his head to the spurting water of the fountain. “All I remember is getting tortured last time I tried to help. A-And you don’t even know the apocalypse is going to happen!”

He was attracting stares now, he could feel curious passer-bys glancing at him yelling at nothing. Ben let out a growl of frustration. “God, Klaus! Do you know what  _ I _ would do, if I was alive?”

“Yes, yes, you’d run head-on into the danger and get goddamn killed again,” Klaus snapped, sitting up to look at Ben. “Just like the last time. This is smart. I’m being smart, not going. I’m learning from  _ your _ mistakes.”

“Mistakes?” said Ben, hands balling into fists. “I’d do it again, if it’d get you off your skinny ass.”

Klaus scoffed, folding his arms and looking away, but his eyes were drawn back to the Avengers tower in the distance behind Ben again and again. But he couldn’t go. He’d just mess it up again, he knew it. Tony Stark could handle it with any of his siblings that bothered to show up. He was just a straggler, really, and… he had an okay life here, in New York. He liked the anonymity of it, the action without any responsibilities, only a day hustle and a colorful night life. It wasn’t up to  _ him _ to fix anything. That was ridiculous, it had never been him to fix things. 

“No,” he decided, standing and brushing off his sparkly magician’s top hat. 

“No?” parroted Ben, incredulous.

“No.” _Not this time._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied, this chapter was so easy I finished it an hour, whoops. next one's gonna take a while though, for real this time. also thank you so much for commenting, all of you that have!! you have no idea what it does for my self-esteem


	12. Without Arrows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i lied.
> 
> also! for the kids out there who've just watched the marvel movies: in the comics, Clint is deaf! he has hearing aids! that's important to me!

Clint had mastered the art of staying hidden, but in all the commotion it wasn’t even that hard. He watched, wobbling between concerned and amused, as the siblings shouted over one another with increasingly angry voices. Clint actually adjusted his hearing aids to account for the noise, as both Luther and Diego had impressive sets of lungs. Natasha kept glancing over at him from where she stood next to the exasperated Tony, who hadn’t gotten two hours of shut-eye over the last three days, due to last-minute preparations for Vanya’s arrival. There had been a whole legal tangle with Hill, but Tony had cleared it with eight hours of legal bargaining. Clint sympathized with both Natasha’s unsure expression and Tony’s sleep-deprived plight, but was content to sit back and watch until someone said he should shoot someone in the foot.

“Please--” groaned Tony, making futile gestures with his hands. The shouting just got louder, and Allison put out a hand to shush him while she chewed Luther out. “Come on. What is wrong with these people?” Tony muttered in an aside to Natasha. 

Natasha folded her slim arms and made a tiny shrug with her shoulders. “I don’t know,” she replied. Then she said something Clint couldn’t hear with his adjusted hearing aids. Something about Hill, probably about how she needed them to assign a class to these people before the legal department blew up their helicarrier and their funding. 

An enraged bellow came from Luther, and the next thing Clint knew, the couch in the middle of the room had been ripped to bits by giant ape hands, and Diego had a knife in his hand (where did he get that?).

Tony glanced at Clint, then sighed, rubbing his temples. He muttered something, and Clint’s lip reading was a tad rusty but he thought he spotted the word _fuckbucket._ Tony got creative with swears when he was tired. He looked between Clint and his redheaded friend. 

“This is out of hand,” he growled, grabbing for his bracelet on the bar. Clint rose a brow. “Natasha, Clint, restrain them for me? I have to call Hill and tell her to send a helicopter to pick these idiots up so we can put them in containment units. Separate. Containment units. And then we’ll decide what to do with them, Jesus Christ…” Tony sighed, adjusting the metal band around his wrist. “Hop to it, my government agents.” He took his phone out of his pocket and began to dial numbers. 

Clint gave a mock salute, pushing himself off the wall he was leaning on. The SHIELD agents in black backed away, smiling a little, when he walked down the stairs to the landing where the siblings were shouting in a circle around Vanya. The girl, Allison, glanced at him, but didn’t pause in her pointing fingers. The two brothers were too wrapped up in their arguments to notice his stealthy approach. 

_“You restrain Allison,”_ muttered Natasha into his earpiece. He nodded, too close to the siblings to reply. _“I’ll get Diego. Remember, restrain. Not kill.”_

He almost bit back a sarcastic reply about how Natasha killed more people accidentally than he ever did. Clint was precise, surgical, like his arrows. Natasha was like her guns. Well-meaning, destructive, but also wildly off sometimes. 

“Hey,” Clint said, walking between Allison and her brothers. “I’m Clint,” he added, when Allison’s brow furrowed. “And I’m going to need you to step away.”

“What?” she spluttered. “No way. I’ve been looking for my brothers and my sister for over a year now.”

“Look, I get that. I really do, but if you keep this up you guys are going to break more than couches,” Clint said, putting out a calming hand. 

Allison scoffed, folding her arms and shifting into a posture Clint knew well, the posture that Natasha adopted when she was about to chew him out. Despite himself, Clint swallowed nervously. “Listen. Clint.” She smiled, sharp and condescending. The brothers behind Clint stopped arguing, seemingly as attuned to that posture as he was. “I don’t care who you are. I’m sure you’ve got orders or something to break us up, but with all due respect, this is none of your business. Family only, and you’re not family.”

She tried to brush past him, marching towards her brothers with vengeance in her eyes. He didn’t let her, pushing her firmly backwards. He readied the syringe with the sleep drugs, which had been stuck in one of his many pockets. Allison looked at him, incredulous. She tried to push past again, and he grabbed her wrist. Allison twisted away, snapping her arm back and ducking around his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, Diego saw Natasha throw a punch at Diego, seemingly having trouble restraining her target as well. 

Luther stepped forward. “Hey--”

Clint glared at him and he swallowed, backing away and glancing at Natasha and Diego, who were locked in their own tussle. They’d observed his almost comical dedication to authority in the weeks Luther had been there, and almost any sense of disapproval was enough to make him back off. Unless, it seemed, it came from Diego. 

Clint slid his leg around, tripping Allison so she fell forward, and then grabbing her shoulder so she was in his control. Allison turned around and ducked under his arm, elbowing the arm carrying the syringe. She made a grab for it, but he took a half-step back just in time. Allison threw her first punch, and because Clint was focused on the syringe, her fist landed exactly where she wanted it to, causing him to double over, dull pain thudding in his chest. He kicked out with one of his feet, trying to hit her shin. She danced backwards, and then blocked his next attempt to hit her with a well-placed forearm. He focused, now, reassessing his impression of this sunny-dressed woman. Clint suddenly punched with his other arm, hitting his mark and twisting his other arm, still locked with hers, around to hold her neck to his shoulder in a chokehold, syringe clenched in his hand. Both his hands were occupied with keeping the struggling Allison from escaping, so he couldn’t stick her just yet. 

“You’re pretty good,” he said, glancing up at Natasha, who was still dancing with Diego. 

“So are you,” she panted back, arm struggling from where Clint was holding it behind his back. “But I heard a rumor you didn’t want to fight me.”

He frowned, still holding her in a choke hold. “Excuse me?”

She blinked, stopping her wriggling for a moment. “What?” she said, incredulous. “Why didn’t that work?”

“Why didn’t what work?” he asked, curious. But in his bafflement Allison took the opportunity to slip out from underneath the choke hold, elbowing Clint in the side, in the vulnerable spot not covered by the protective vest. She spun, making a grab for the syringe, but Clint was too fast to allow that. He took a step right, she took one left, until they were circling each other like cats. “Wait. What did you just try to do to me?”

She blew a lock of black hair out of her eyes. “Nothing. Just a bit of mind control.”

“Oh. Right, powers.” Clint hadn’t really paid attention during the brief on the sibling’s abilities. He lunged forward suddenly, pushing against her shoulders. They fell together, Allison’s back hitting the ground with a crack and Clint scrabbling to pin her arms, accidentally letting go of the syringe in the process. She kicked up, enough to throw him off his balance, and she rolled on top, successfully pressing his hands to the ground. 

Allison glanced between the syringe rolling away from Clint’s hand, eyes narrowing as she realised she couldn’t grab it without letting go of Clint. “You’re with SHIELD, right?” she huffed as Clint tried to break free. “That government agency?”

“Kind of,” Clint grunted. “Ever heard of Hawkeye?”

Those brown eyes widened, staring into his as he strained to pull his hands off the floor. “The Avenger? Wait. Aren’t you supposed to be wearing purple spandex?”

He rolled his eyes. “That was one time. But yeah. That’s me, so I’d advise you to get off of me and cooperate.”

Allison bit her lip, considering it. “I heard a rumor...” she said slowly, and her brow furrowed as she searched his eyes. “Why isn’t that working?” Her voice was baffled and confused.

Clint made a decision. He flipped over backwards, ass over teakettle, carrying her with him. She slammed into the ground, letting out a pained noise. He grunted in pain as well, he hadn’t landed where he wanted. That was why he never did that move. He rolled off of Allison, stumbling to his feet, readying his backup syringe, this time hiding it behind his hand. 

She got to her feet, panting with exertion. “I don’t even know why we’re doing this,” she growled, readying her hands again. The contrast between that angry pose and sun-yellow dress was a little disorienting to Clint, but he’d seen Nat do a backflip tomahawk throw in a neon pink nightgown before, so it probably wasn’t as baffling to him as it was to your average Joe. Plus, that time he’d glimpsed Rhodey in a sexy nurse costume for Halloween had numbed him to most things. 

“We’re doing this because you three won’t calm down,” Clint explained, holding his hands up with hers, like he didn’t have a syringe in his hand. “And Tony doesn’t want you to run away again.”

“You could have asked nicely,” she replied, matter-of-fact. Clint lunged forward a little, but she didn’t react other than a preparatory placing of a foot. Smart. He retreated back, still watching. “And we’re a super-family,” she added. “Fighting and tearing up couches is how we solve most things.”

“I know the feeling. But Tony liked that couch,” said Clint smoothly, watching her carefully. “And Fury’s going to raise hell if something happens and you slip away.”

“Are we that important?”

He shrugged. “More like a deviation from the norm, and Fury doesn’t like deviations from the norm.” Clint paused. “Actually, scratch that. Fury loves deviations from the norm, if they’re useful.”

That was the wrong thing to say. He could see it in the way she squared her shoulders, sharp posture suddenly immaculate. Allison’s black-lined eyes narrowed in anger. “Oh. I get it. You want to use us.”

Clint tried to say something, but Allison lunged forward, hitting him across the jaw. He recoiled, but his instincts were strong enough to lunge to the side, dodging her left hook. She went past him, and he twisted around to hold her body close to his. The syringe went into her neck, and she stumbled forward as he pressed the clear liquid into her neck. Allison fell to the floor with a thud, suddenly heavy in Clint’s arms. 

Clint looked up to see Diego collapsed similarly on the floor, Natasha watching him with a satisfied smirk. “Took you long enough,” she commented, folding her arms. “I was done two minutes ago.”

He shrugged. 

Luther stepped up, fidgeting with his hands. God, that lost-puppy expression was practically laughable. The first time Clint had met Luther, he’d thought he was a lot like Steve, but that impression had deteriorated over the weeks he’d gotten to know Luther. Steve had fire, had opinions that went against authority, which was part of the reason Clint liked him so much. Good leaders couldn’t go around trusting everybody all the time. But Luther Hargreeves… he was a little… gullible. And lonely, Clint saw that in him too, but every time he tried to have pity for the guy, he just couldn’t stop thinking about that stupid lost-puppy expression. Luther cleared his throat. “Where--what’s going to happen to them?” he asked, voice a little querulous. 

Natasha looked back at Tony in the back corner, who was hissing something into his phone, shoulders thrown back in anger. Clint knew that expression. Tony got it every time the red tape just became too much. Natasha shrugged, thin shoulders going up and down gracefully. Everything she did was graceful. “SHIELD is going to take them. We’ll question them, because clearly your account of the events is clearly a little…” she cocked her head. “Biased.”

Luther flushed. “I--”

“It’s not your fault,” interrupted Clint quickly. “Everyone’s memory gets a little warped when they’re angry, or even just normally. They just want different perspectives, is all.” 

Luther relaxed a little, but he kept glancing at his siblings, all of them slumped on the floor. His eyes lingered on Allison. “They’ll be safe, right?”

Another twang of pity ran through Clint’s chest. “Yeah, sure, buddy,” he assured Luther. “They’ll be okay.”

Clint heard Tony’s sigh of relief, turned just in time to see Stark turn back around, marching down the stairs. “Okay, they’re not sending a helicopter to pick them up because--” he gestured to the chunks of metal blocking the helipad “--well, because of that. So Clint and Natasha and Luther and all you SHIELD agents are going to accompany them in the Quinjet to the helicarrier. And then Hill’s going to do whatever the hell she wants.”

“What?” said Luther, eyes snapping up from his sleeping sister to Tony. 

Tony made an exhausted gesture. “Not what I meant. It’s fine. Hill's cool. Anyway, you all go get into the Quinjet, I’m going to go check on Peter, I’m like eighty percent sure he’s on the outside of the wall right now listening to everything that’s going on, and I want to make sure he’s not skipping school.”

“I’m not skipping school!” came a muffled yell from outside the wall. “We’re on winter break!”

Clint had to stifle a laugh at Tony’s grudgingly bemused expression. Tony sighed, probably for Peter’s benefit. “Meet me outside,” Tony yelled, stepping gingerly over the broken glass of the doors shattered in the shockwave onto the trashed helicopter pad, suit whipping in the wind. 

Clint and Natasha exchanged a glance. As Clint went to leave the room, he gestured to the available SHIELD agents to pick up the unconscious siblings lying in various positions on the ground. Luther stepped in front of the agent who moved to pick up Allison. Clint watched over his shoulder as he and Natasha made their way up the stairs. 

“I got her,” Luther said, kneeling to scoop her into his arms. Clint felt a vague sense of disgust. Natasha and Clint exchanged a glance, and Clint felt relief that Natasha was feeling the same way. They shook their heads together and made their way to the Quinjet. 

_This family is so fucking weird._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this chapter lickety-split, but the next one IS going to take longer. I know I sound like The Boy (haha) who cried wolf but Damn Do I Mean It This Time
> 
> also comments give me validation even if they're super simple you have no idea the AMOUNT of serotonin--


	13. Nondisclosure

It wasn’t Natasha’s place to question things. She seduced, she fought, she killed. That was her job, and she took it very seriously. A part of her job was keeping her lips sealed, and she’d taken that zipped-lip quality into practically every part of her life. The rest of the Avengers were probably the only ones she talked to in more than one-sentence answers. They were like a family, the only one she’d ever really had. Right now, things were normal in the family, as normal as they ever got. Steve was on a break, taking some time to work on his art and revisit New Orleans. Bruce was tied up with some new research convention in Barcelona. Tony was… Tony was Iron Man, though Peter was an increasingly commonplace fixture in New York. Thor was being Thor, off in Washington State helping with some flood. He’d be back in a couple days, or whenever that got fixed. So it was just Clint and Natasha at SHIELD, which brought her back to the days before the Avengers, when she didn’t know what a family was like, even a weird one like this. 

Things had been normal for almost a year. No huge disasters. Normal for superheroes, strange for anyone else, but still a version of normal. Then Tony had called Fury one day, ranting about how he’d woken up with Pepper facedown on the bar, having no memory of the last twenty minutes. Then he told them about the security cameras, the crappy video and the crystal-clear audio. 

Apocalypse. 

That had sent SHIELD into a relative panic, and they’d looked for Allison all over, even put out an announcement, but New York was just too big of a city and their description of her just too vague. They’d thought she’d been an outlier. Just a little blip. But no, Klaus had appeared, had been captured on the new security cams and in the preparatory glass cage. Clint had been the one to watch the tapes with Fury, Natasha had been in Venezuela that week, but she’d heard of him floating, of there being a ghost, and other strange things. 

They’d really been confused then, but not necessarily concerned, given Klaus had said the apocalypse wasn't going to happen. Then Diego. Diego, who baffled Peter and angered Tony. Through all of this, those ten months, there had been other, more immediate threats. Tony had been tied up with strange readings on a satellite, Bruce had found some sort of gamma radiation camp they’d had to eradicate, they’d found a Hydra sleeper cell in the Helicarrier, among other things. The whole Hargreeves thing had sort of been pushed to the back burner. 

Luther. The big, childlike, brute of a man who’d been dumb enough to actually stay. Tony had thought he was smart to stay, at first, but they realised soon it was for all of the wrong reasons. He’d told them of Vanya, of Harold Jenkins, of his brother Five and Allison’s injury. 

Then she’d arrived. Natasha had watched, through the cams in the cage, as it all went to shit. 

Then they’d come. Like pigeons to their home, like that terrifying beam of light had been a literal homing beacon, drawing two of the three missing back to their home. The varying ways the siblings had treated Vanya had intrigued Natasha, the righteously angry way Diego had blamed everything on Luther, the concerned filial care Allison had stroked Vanya’s hair. 

Then the fight. Interesting thing, fighting someone to subdue them, not to kill them. Less of a grapple, more of a dance. 

Natasha thought about all of this as she leaned against the metallic wall of the Quinjet, mind flickering through idle trains of thought like someone flipping through a photo album. Quick, mindless, almost nonsensical as she jumped from thought to thought. The rest of the SHIELD agents weren’t in the Quinjet, as the plane got a little cramped with a dozen people in it. They’d elected to wait for a helicopter at the nearest airport. 

“So?” said Clint, lounging in one of the seats of the Quinjet, having put it on autopilot. He turned a little to look at her, the chair at a right angle to where she was standing. “What’d you think? Of Diego?”

Diego was good. Probably on par with her. He’d dodged almost every punch, gymnastic moves almost flamboyant. She’d actually had fun with that fight, and hadn't been able to suppress a smile when he finally slipped up, throwing a punch a little to hard, tipping him slightly off balance. When she’d shocked him with her bracelets, his look of surprise had been akin to hers when he’d used a Russian move on her, one she thought only herself and maybe four others knew. Diego was good. His unexpected kick to her side had actually bruised, and if Natasha hadn’t been wearing her special shock-resistant suit it most certainly would have cracked her ribs. All the more impressive considering he’d been wearing jeans and a windbreaker. 

Natasha chewed her lip, trying to guess how best to phrase her thoughts. “Trained in Russian combat, English wrestling, two forms of boxing and jiu-jitsu.”

Clint nodded, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket. His eyes were lost in thought, though he didn’t have that zonked-out look Bruce sometimes got when he was tinkering with a project. “Same as Allison,” he commented. “She leaned into her boxing training.”

“He leaned into the Russian combat,” Natasha added, folding her arms and leaning more against the rumbling side of the Quinjet. “But I think he might have been just matching me.”

They looked at the unconscious Diego and Allison, lying on respective pull-out couches. Allison looked peaceful, relaxed features and loose shoulders. Diego had instinctively curled into a protective ball. 

“She tried to hypnotize me,” Clint added, carefully absentminded. Natasha’s eyes flickered between Allison and her partner. She had seen Clint and the invader talking during their fight, though she’d assumed it was just banter. 

“Tried?” Natasha parroted, turning a little towards the man in the chair. 

He nodded, eyes intent on hers. “Didn’t work.”

“Why?”

Clint shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s the second time a magic person’s tried to mind control me, though. Why is that?” He threw his gloved hands into the air. “Do I just look like I could be brainwashed?”

Natasha laughed a little, just a brief second of a chuckle. That was more than she usually let through. Maybe she was just tired after the fight. “It’s probably just because you insist on fighting said magic people,” she commented, smiling a little as she looked at the ground. 

Clint made a sarcastic sound with his throat, head leaning back onto the headrest. “Sure.  _ You _ fight magic people, and  _ you _ never get brainwashed.”

She shrugged, a quick up and down of shoulders. “True. I--”

The autopilot beeped. Clint leaned forward towards the frontal window, putting his hands on the control board. “Control, this is Quinjet 23-4 carrying Hawkeye and Black Widow plus cargo, requesting a landing,” he said professionally, a completely different tone than the friendly one he used with Natasha. His eyes searched the blue-white clouds around them.

“Request received, Hawkeye. Is the cargo secure?” came a crisp voice from the speakers. 

Clint reached up to press a red button on the roof. “Cargo is secure. No backup or containment needed, control.”

“Request admitted, Hawkeye. Welcome home.” The button Clint had pressed turned green, signifying they were free to land without getting shot at. Natasha leaned on the back of Clint’s seat, arms folded to rest her chin on top, watching the shimmering sky fold into a helicarrier, visible to their eyes only. 

She’d always found the cloaking technology fascinating, but never bothered to ask Bruce or Tony how it worked. Bruce would likely get wrapped up in the science jargon and the details and Tony would probably dismiss her with some oversimplified explanation. So Natasha didn’t ask. Perhaps it was better that way, leaving little things to mystery. 

That was a bad attitude for a spy to have, Natasha reflected as Clint guided them in for a landing. Spies were supposed to want every bit of information they could get.

They skidded into the landing strip, a perfect AI-assisted landing that Clint would surely say was all him, if asked. A team of SHIELD agents rushed forward, probably carrying orders to take the cargo to the most secure questioning facility they had. Natasha helped Clint out of his seat, though heaven knew he didn’t need it. The gesture was one of friendship, one of trust, that wouldn’t have happened with virtually anyone she knew. Just a little sign they both recognized as something indicative of more than coworkers. 

Natasha opened the Quinjet’s doors with a grey, half-concealed button, making way for the people in black nodding quick hellos and carrying Allison and Diego out of the door. Natasha got a quick glimpse of Diego’s rolled-back head before they carted them away. She wondered where they’d go. B-9? B-44? Possibly even something in C? 

Though she loved the neat and tidiness that SHIELD offered, sometimes the confusingly complicated ordering system got her head in knots. Before Fury and Hill had arrived (especially Hill, the woman was as organized as Jarvis), SHIELD had had three different leaders within eight years, all with their own systems and secrets. This had resulted in an absolute mess of digital files and planning, and a whole lot for Fury to clean up. There were still some remnants of the chaos before in the way things were stored, as nobody bothered to change them. 

Still, most of it was neat and tidy, Natasha supposed. She’d only had a glimpse of the legal and informational side of SHIELD. 

Natasha motioned for Clint to follow her to debrief, stripping off her spent shock bracelets as they made their way across the windy topside, steel-toed boots clicking on the worn concrete. A couple of agents tagged along, making sure none of them ran off to their rooms before inventory was checked. Top agents had an embarrassing history of nicking weapons for their own personal use. “What do you suppose is going to happen to them?” asked Clint, a step or so behind her. He was quiet enough so the SHIELD agents wouldn’t think he was talking to them. 

“Why are you asking me?” she responded. Natasha ducked into a loud, crowded airlock she knew eventually led to A-61, debrief. The doors shunked behind their little group, pressurised air making the sudden silence against the wind seem deafening. 

Clint huffed. “Well, I know you don’t know. But what’s your best guess?” Another shunk, this one signalling their allowed entrance into the belly of the beast, so to speak. 

Natasha thought about it more, as they got down to the black hallway, adorned with doors. “I think…” she paused. “I think interrogation. But after that I don’t know. It all depends on what they say.”

A-57, A-58… she knew the way, but it didn’t hurt to count the doors just in case. When they got to the correct room, she pushed it open and threw her shock bracelets into the bin she knew was waiting. 

Molly, their resident cataloguer and bitch, looked up from her clipboard to narrow her eyes at Natasha and Clint. “Didn’t manage to throw your electric destabilizers into a river this time?” she said haughtily, sharp green eyes flickering between the bracelets and Natasha. 

If Clint and Natasha were gossipers, they would have gossiped behind Molly’s back. But they weren’t, and confined their urges to sharing knowing looks. Natasha put on her bitchiest smile and shook her head. “Nope. And I brought back the grappling hook, too.” 

She harrumphed, going back to her clipboard. God, never satisfied, that girl… 

Clint was already in the process of slipping off every weapon he’d checked out, placing them in an empty metal bin. They were allowed to keep the shock-resistant suits on, just because SHIELD was nothing if not prepared and didn’t want to leave their best agents defenceless against an unexpected attack. But everything else went into the bin, to the chagrin of every trigger-happy fighter on the team.

Natasha happily accepted the weight of her weapons off of her shoulders, knowing she was just as capable with her fists as she was with a baton or a gun. 

“Nothing lost?” said Molly, brown eyebrow going upward. 

She shook her head. 

“Nope,” replied Clint. “I used a syringe, however. You’ll have to check with bio on refilling that.” He opened his gloved hand to reveal that empty syringe, letting it tumble into the bin, last drops of green liquid falling off the tip. 

“I know who I’ll have to check with,” she snapped, sharp mouth tilted downward. “Fine. Fill out the sheets, you know the drill.”

Natasha grabbed the proffered clipboard, pressing it against one of the grey walls to answer the debrief questions. Describe the mission. Any pertinent details. Did you take a trip to medical? Witnesses? Problems? Finally, Natasha scratched out the last signature on the required nondisclosure agreement that came at the end of every mission. She turned and handed the clipboard back to Molly, who flipped through it scrupulously, as she’d done with Clint’s moments ago. 

“You’re free to go,” she sighed, placing the sheets on the relevant pile. 

Clint made a mock salute, which Natasha had to suppress the urge to smile at, and they exited the room, tagalong SHIELD agents staying behind to help Molly tally up the various weaponry. 

“Want to play cards?” suggested Natasha, their usual wind-down activity after a bit of action. 

He shook his head, their legs in sync as they walked. “I’m going to watch the interrogations.”

“Good,” replied the self-satisfied Natasha, edge of a smirk peeking through. “I didn’t want to play cards anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter! comments, as always, are MUCH appreciated


	14. Ignorance is Bliss

Tony felt like one of Clint’s old practice targets. Worn, held together by threads, full of holes, and yet he kept getting pounded with problems like sharp objects. He’d been stretched thin before, but he’d never been bombarded by quite so many things at once. 

Number one: Steve was in a sulk again and Tony had to pick up his slack, not to mention Banner was on some science convention trip for a week, leaving Tony the only genius around to help Fury. Such a responsibility seemed fun, but really it just meant Fury’s hesitantly baffled scientists stopped by twice as much. 

Number two: legal shenanigans about some prototype he’d _thought_ was original but turned out someone in Japan had already made one, causing some sort of copyright issue Pepper had to sort out, leaving her in a huff and him with almost no moral support.

Number three: NASA kept yelling at him about some strange readings on a satellite, and damn were those emails annoying. Not to mention that was one of the only problems he had on his plate that he was actually interested in, and it kept getting pushed back by minor adventures with Hydra and any other enemies that decided to resurface. 

Number four: the _goddamn_ Hargreeves siblings. 

When Luther had shown up, Tony had thought it was an end to their problems, at least with the siblings. Then he’d spent a week orientating Luther to their universe and he’d realised just how much he’d wished Allison had been the one to stay. Klaus probably would have caused more problems (he talked to ghosts and heaven knew everyone on the Avengers was bound to have a few hanging around), but at least he would have been _interesting_. Luther was like a bag of daddy issues dirt. Or even Diego would have been better, despite the whole stabbing-Peter-in-the-leg-thing. But now that they had four out of six in custody he thought were nearing the end of the road that was this little misadventure. 

Tony stepped out onto the helicopter pad, shivering a little as he heard the various SHIELD agents packing away their stuff and leaving the bar room, following Natasha and Clint. The part of him that liked normal, peaceful things, envied them a little, the way the only thing they had to do was follow rules. Tony had to make his own rules, which was awesome sometimes, but got a little overwhelming when he bit off more than he could chew. When he did that, he had nobody to blame but himself. No, that was incorrect. He could blame other people for bringing him those problems in the first place. 

Tony stepped around a smoking hunk of metal, spotting Peter slinging around the tower out of the corner of his eye. 

Peter’s red mask melted away from his face, brown hair whipping in the cold wind. “What’s going on?” he asked eagerly. His eyes were bright, like Tony’s had been some time in the vaguely-remembered past. Peter stepped closer. “I just--all I heard was a lot of yelling.”

“Oh, so you not only were you eavesdropping, but you didn’t even have the presence of mind to pay attention?” Tony gave an inward sigh, pulling his coat around himself. Thin Italian cut was not the way to go today, apparently. He wasn’t angry, just still digesting the events of the last… what had it been. Twenty minutes? They’d prepared for an hour, calming the nervous Number One, waiting for his sister to arrive. They hadn’t known when she would drop in, only had a vague idea of even the hour, but Tony recalled a SHIELD agent yelling out the time 9:14 AM when the blue light had started to fizzle. Anyway, the whole argument, beacon, reunion and fighting thing had all happened within twenty minutes. That was a very short time for Tony to digest it all, and when he was thinking things over his brain went on autopilot, which manifested as snark. So he wasn’t angry, just in the final stage of a semi-permanent state of annoyance that had begun as soon as Luther had dropped into his universe. 

Peter ducked his head, shrugging a little. He looked a little shamed, but not much. That was in character for Peter, knowing he should be sorry but not really being. 

Tony sighed, fighting his urge to ruffle the kid’s hair. He folded his arms instead, trying to keep warm in the cold wind of the helicopter pad. “Okay. Fine. You probably saw Vanya blow up the tower, right?”

The kid nodded, perking right up at Tony’s not-quite forgiveness. He knew ignoring Peter’s mistakes was as good as Tony saying sorry, which was never going to happen. “Big beam thing. That’s why I came.”

“Yeah. Well, apparently that’s a thing that happens a lot with these people because Allison and Diego came running.”

Peter nodded, glancing between the wreckage and the trashed inside of the tower. “Right. And then… they tried to fight you?”

Tony shook his head as the wind picked up a little, a constant pressure against his back. “No,” he said, unable to repress a slight sigh. “They started arguing.”

“Arguing? I would have thought they’d be happy to see each other,” mused Peter, brow furrowing. What an innocent ideology. Tony hadn’t had siblings, but he had enough friends with them to know that when siblings parted on bad terms they either ignored the subject when brought back together or picked right up where they left off, depending on the siblings. Clearly the Hargreeves weren’t going to gloss over their considerable issues. 

Tony shrugged. “Guess not. Whatever, they fought and I got tired of it and sicced Natasha and Clint on ‘em.” That had been fun, to watch Natasha kick Diego’s ass. He secretly enjoyed watching her work, gave him some weird sense of pleasure, knowing he had _that_ in his arsenal. Something about his brain couldn’t comprehend that he had a literal god on his side, but it really liked knowing Natasha could do a flying tomahawk throw if someone ever stole his money/armor. Watching Clint out of the corner of his eye had been less fun, and he’d winced when Allison had toppled to the floor. “They’re going up to the helicarrier right now,” he added. 

“Can I come too?” said Peter. Tony turned his eyes back to Peter from where he was looking into the distance, semi-lost in his thoughts. 

He squinted at him. “What? No. Of course not.”

Peter shifted. “Well. What can I do?”

“Do?” parroted Tony. “Do? You’re supposed to be at your house, helping Aunt May with… with her Christmas decorations or whatever, if it’s winter break like you said.”

“We’re done with the decorations,” protested Peter quickly. “Come on. Nobody’s--Nobody’s being mean near Christmas and Hanukkah. I haven’t done anything in weeks.”

“That’s a good thing, Peter,” Tony snapped. His heart ached for a chance to do nothing for a while. “Nobody being mean is a good thing.” But his exasperated demeanor defrosted a little at Peter’s frustrated expression. He knew how hard it was, trying to be a hero with what little you had. He’d seen that in himself, in Ho Yinsen in that dusty cave…

Ho Yinsen. “Okay, fine,” Tony said. 

Peter’s eyes snapped up. “What?”

“Fine, you can help. You know the streets, you know the slums--”

Peter winced, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, I wouldn’t say I know the slums. We’re not _that_ poor, we’re like a solid lower-middle-class fami--”

“You know what I mean,” Tony snapped. 

He looked chastised, mouth shutting with a clop. “Right.”

“Right. Go look for Klaus. You watched the security cams, you know what he looks like, right?” 

Peter nodded slowly, and Tony could see the idea forming in that little pubescent brain of his. It was a good idea. Peter knew New York like Tony never could, knew the people to talk to to find a skinny addict. “Right. Luther told us he would be wearing dog tags. And that he’s definitely still struggling with addiction, and that when he’s about to make the ghost brother appear, his fists glow blue. And that he likes chocolate, had a mild obsession with drag queens for a couple years and… oh, and he doesn't have any sense of responsibility.” That was about all they’d gotten about Klaus, as Luther had been more inclined to focus on his other siblings, like Allison and Diego.

Peter swallowed. “That’s not a lot to go on…”

Tony clapped him on the shoulder, turning back to the doors, brain delving into that wild tumble of thoughts once again. “You’re a smart kid, Peter. You’ll figure it out.”

Tony Stark had bigger things to worry about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry fuckin christmas to everyone but mitch mcconnell! I hope he dies in a deep, deep hole, like the mole rat person he is!


	15. Faux-Calm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just to be extra specially clear in case I did it wrong there is absolutely no clint/allison pairing in this a) it wouldn't work and b) there are. basically no ships in this fic. so.

Allison woke with a metallic taste in her mouth, cheek pressed up against something cold. She blinked blearily, arms weak as she pushed herself upward, world spinning a little. Something clanked when she moved her right wrist.  _ Handcuffs, _ she thought mildly, still befuddled by sleep and confusion. Allison shook her head to try to snap herself out of it, blinking at the aluminum table in front of her. She pulled her hands away, or tried to. Clank. 

That metallic sound snapped her back to reality, like a rubber band breaking from tension. Allison realised what had happened in a dizzying rush. That Hawkeye had won, the slippery bastard, and now had taken her back to SHIELD headquarters, wherever that was. Allison stood up, hand still cuffed to the table. She looked at the mirror to her left, which she knew wasn’t a real one, from watching cop shows with Patrick. She saw a security camera blinking a red dot behind her in the mirror, so somebody was definitely watching. “Clint?” she said, glancing between her reflection and the camera hesitantly. “Tony?” 

No answer. Allison sat back down again in one fluid motion, huffing a little. She had her assistant job to get to, and the fluorescent lights didn’t give her any indication of the time. Maybe she’d been here for an hour. Maybe two. Maybe a whole day. 

She didn’t feel hungry, but she was still a little woozy still from whatever Clint had injected her with, so maybe that was messing with her senses. Allison took in a deep breath, closing her eyes and laying her hands on the table, clasped together. The metal was cold against her fingers, and the vent above her was blasting freezing air at her face. She wondered if that had been intentional. 

Allison had never been kidnapped before. Diego had, Klaus and Ben too. But never her, probably because the minute she opened her mouth she would be freed. What had Dad said about being questioned? Allison had an excellent memory, but Dad had only brushed over that topic with her. Whatever, she knew that giving them information was bad, so keeping her mouth shut was likely the best option until she decided to rumor someone and run the hell out of there.

The door opened. A woman in a tight blue sweater and black cargo pants emerged, one brown brow raised as she looked Allison over. Clearly, the woman had been asked to appear friendly but wasn’t having it. She walked in slowly, setting the clipboard and phone she was carrying on the table. The woman had a gun, Allison noticed, lips tightening in disapproval.

“Hello,” said the woman, still watching Allison carefully. She slipped into the seat, folding her hands under her chin, thin fingers lacing together. “I’m Agent Maria Hill, SHIELD.”

Allison said nothing. Inwardly, she was panicking, thoughts heightened as she tried to scrutinize her situation. On the outside, she straightened her back and leaned her shoulders forward a little, hands still clasped in front of her. Agent Maria Hill had short brown hair and fine features, though they seemed to be permanently resting in a calm, controlled expression. Other than the vague sense she should trust this woman, Allison couldn’t discern anything about her. 

One of those thin eyebrows raised a little at Allison’s sealed lips. She unclipped the file on the folder, opening it with a polished air. Allison liked her, but liking a person was no basis for giving information in an interrogation. Based on what she had heard about SHIELD (very little), they seemed like decent people, but after her father’s authoritarian rule over the household, none of their family had ever had any inclination to trust any sort of government. Except Luther. But he had always been the odd one out in that respect. 

“You, Allison Hargreeves, arrived in our universe on July 18th, 2018,” said Maria Hill calmly, eyes skimming the file. Allison spotted her own blurry picture. The security cameras! She should have thought of that after running away. Allison’s lips involuntarily tightened again, but she tried to remain impassive. Maria Hill’s mouth quirked up in a bit of a smile. “Right. What I think you are currently unaware of is that Klaus Hargreeves arrived three months afterwards, October 1st, 2018.”

“Where is he?” Allison asked, the words tumbling out of her mouth without her own consent. She leaned back a little after her outburst, swallowing. 

“We don’t know,” said Hill, not seeming the least bit smug, only calm and professional. She shrugged, thin shoulders going up and down. “Had his ghost friend beat up Tony, escaped down the fire stairs. New York’s a big place, and we lost him.”

That was… she wasn’t quite sure if that was good or bad. Klaus was free, Klaus was alone. Well, at least he had Ben, practically the only one out of them who had ever resembled anything close to reasonable. Allison opened her mouth to reply, thought better of it, shut it with a clop and nodded. 

Hill turned back to the file. Klaus’s picture was in much higher definition, his sharp features shown clearly in the plastic-covered paper, but Allison only caught a glimpse before Hill turned the page. “Right. The next occurance is a little stranger. Your other brother, Diego, arrived on November 14th, 2018.”

_ What did he do? _ Allison said nothing. 

“His first interaction was to try and convince one of our junior members, Spider-Man, to help him escape, and then he stabbed him in the thigh and ran into the streets.”

_ Absolute fucker.  _ Allison said nothing. 

Maria looked at her through black lashes, and then back at her file. “Judging by the police jacket he had on and the fact that our techies just found a decorated Diego Harlan in the less-than-adequate police records system, I’d say he’s been more than making up for it.”

_ Less of a fucker.  _ Allison said nothing. 

Hill flipped to the next page carefully. “Stark prepared more, the next time. Built a machine with our Dr. Banner that predicted the next arrivals.” That was interesting. Father had tried to build something similar in the weeks after Five had disappeared, but he’d never succeeded in tracking Five’s particular brand of time travel. “Then Stark built a containment unit to, well, contain that arrival. That seemed a little excessive given how well Luther cooperated.” Hill flipped to the next page in the file. Luther’s picture looked like a professional one, he was looking at the camera and the background was white. Allison could see the inscription  _ No. 1  _ below it.  _ Just like old times.  _ She felt a little riot of confusion and disgust in her stomach, some leftover emotions from those weeks when she’d realised the reasons behind those numbers. Just another of dear old Dad’s manipulations, not an indication of powers or which children he liked best… 

Hill searched her face, eyes scanning Allison’s carefully blank expression. Finally she went back to the file. “Luther is a SHIELD agent now, or will be once he completes the last stage of orientation.” That was interesting too, but given more time to consider the events of the last twenty minutes in memory, she could have likely figured that out. Luther had been wearing black, with a patch on his shoulder with a big number one. When, as siblings, they’d been debating costumes, Luther had wanted a huge circle on his chest with that number. Evidently SHIELD had liked the idea, albeit toned down. In any case, Allison was just happy he was doing something with his life, even if it was working for a shady secret government. 

“Right,” said Hill, making a clicking sound in her mouth. “Now. Vanya arrived today, as you have no doubt guessed. There’s some history there, I think?” Now Hill wanted a response. Allison could see it in the way she leaned forward with keen eyes that she wasn’t going to continue until Allison answered. 

Allison unclasped her hands, tracing a circle into the aluminium table. She still said nothing, for once couldn’t think of anything to say. Or perhaps she could think of too many. She could posture, tell Hill that she was the only one able to control Vanya, try to bargain to get out of this silvery room, but that wasn’t remotely true. She could beg Hill not to hurt Vanya, which was what she most wanted to do. However, Allison had long since learned that in situations where you wanted to beg, the best course of action was to keep your composure and grit your teeth. So she did, looking faux-calmly into Maria Hill’s eyes. “Vanya is my sister. Hurting her would be a mistake.”

Hill sighed, closing the file. “I’ll try to convince the others. But she is powerful.”

“So am I,” Allison snapped, perhaps a bit too harshly. 

“Is that supposed to help her case?”

Allison scoffed, folding her hands again, metal handcuff clanking against the table it was attached to. She leaned across the table. “Where is she?” she asked quietly. 

Hill shook her head. “I can’t tell you.”

“I want to see my sister,” Allison said firmly. She tried not to let her voice betray her, but a little tremor shone through despite her best efforts. She was feeling a little thrum of anger, now, as she focused on the helplessness she felt at not knowing where her siblings were. “And my brothers.”

“I can promise you they are safe,” tried Hill, earnest and professional. 

Allison shook her head, hair swinging in front of her face. “I don’t care. She may be safe but you certainly aren’t.”

“I can assure you we are,” said Hill dryly. “And you don’t get a say in the matter.”

That was the wrong thing to say. She’d been told that  _ countless  _ times in her life, and it had never, ever been remotely true. Allison straightened her back. Hill seemed to realise what she’d said, and her lips thinned into a line. Allison debated what to do, debated how best to get out of this room and find her siblings. Or get out. Getting out was an option too. 

Allison glanced at the mirror, then back at Hill and her gun. “I heard a rumor,” she said carefully, to Hill, but still looking at her own reflection. “That you gave me the key to my handcuffs.”

Hill, expression even blanker now, shook her head as if in a trance. “There isn’t one. We melted it down,” she said, brow furrowing in confusion. Allison immediately released her hold on Hill, knowing if she held it too long Hill would literally go insane from the impossibility. 

“Dammit,” growled Allison, turning back to the mirror. “Then I heard a rumor you shot the mirror.”

Hill took out her gun with smooth efficiency and shot the glass, the crack of it almost deafening in the tiny room. Allison saw three cowering people on the other side as she stood, a man with a clipboard and those two people who’d captured her and Diego in the tower. “I heard a rumor,” she said again, head pounding as she stretched her attention to all four of them, “That you fell asleep for two hours.” 

Three bodies hit the floor. Clint looked at them, still covering his head from the shot, and then back at her. Allison frowned again, frustrated at her inability to control him. 

He vaulted over the edge of the window, scooping up Hill’s gun. Allison, her head finally clear of that drugged-up haze, kicked it out of his hand with a well-placed shiny blue shoe. Clint grabbed Hill’s pen instead, lunging forward. Allison vaulted over the table, sliding until she could reach with one of her hands to the gun on the floor. With a quick motion, she held it over the table, watching Clint’s hands slowly raise up. 

“I never liked guns,” Allison mused, looking Clint over. He was still wearing that stupid black spandex suit thing with the purple accents, but all of his numerous pockets now seemed empty. 

“Neither do I,” he responded, intensely nonchalant, an oxymoron of careless words and flinty eyes. She liked him, but in the way she liked the beautiful movie stars she worked with, a mix of mutual respect and admiration. 

Allison rolled back her shoulders, gun still pointed over the table at Clint’s head. “You’re some sort of super-spy, right?”

“Basically.”

“Pick the lock on my handcuffs with that pen,” she ordered. 

He quirked a brow. “Would have never thought of that,” he remarked, moving smoothly forward to the chain. Allison kept the gun trained on him, though she didn’t put it to his forehead, knowing the exact easy maneuver he would use to turn the gun on her. She watched carefully as he put the pen in the lock, taking a paperclip from the file to steady it. In a remarkable ten seconds or so, the lock clicked open. Allison immediately backed a little away as the cuff slipped off of her wrist, holding the gun with both hands now. 

Clint leaned back upward, hands raising above his head. There was something wrong in that nonchalant expression, something that made Allison cock her head. “Where am I?” she asked. 

“New York.”

“Still? Would have thought… Langley or something.”

Clint scoffed a little as she sidled towards the door, one hand reaching out preparatory to open it. “Langley? We’re not the goddamn CIA, Jesus Christ.”

“You wear black and kidnap people,” Allison retorted flatly. 

“Now you’re thinking FBI,” he teased, smiling a little. 

She gave him a sharp, fake little smile to hide the little bit of genuine amusement. “Right. I’ll be taking my leave, then.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Clint promised smoothly. 

She pointed Hill’s gun at his knee. “No, you won’t.” But at his suddenly sheet-white expression, she took pity on him. She sighed, raising it to his head again. “Fine. Put on the handcuff.” 

He did so, slowly, and once she heard the click of the handcuffs snapping in place, she grabbed the paperclip and the pen. “That was smart,” said Clint when she backed away.

Allison shrugged. Then she glanced at the security cameras and swore. Someone was bound to have noticed the commotion even if nobody was on the cams, and she’d spent two long minutes in the same spot. Clint noticed, and she noticed there was a bit of a twinkle in his eye as she bolted out of the door.  _ I should have just shot him.  _

She skidded into a hallway. A very long hallway, with lots and lots of doors and numbers. B-24, B-22, B-20… okay, so this side was all evens… 

Allison bolted the left way, slowing down to a measured walk when she saw a person approaching. She nodded politely, hoping the man wouldn’t notice the gun behind her back. He didn’t, and Allison sighed in relief, ducking up a stairwell and into… another hallway, infinitely more crowded with no end in sight. Allison swallowed, regretting the bright yellow dress she’d worn today. Everybody else was just wearing different shades of grey, and Allison stuck out like a goddamn sunflower in a smokestack. 

Allison took in a deep breath, and just as she was about to woman up and wade her way through the dozens of armored SHIELD agents and normal-looking techies, an alarm started to blare, little red lights coming from the edges of the ceiling. Immediately, all commotion stopped, and every single grey-colored agent looked at the speakers. 

_ Shit shit shit shit shit… _

“Allison Hargreeves, suspect number 11820 escaped from interrogation in B-26,” intoned the loudspeaker. “Do not let her speak to you, detain or knock out on sight. Wearing--”

But Allison didn’t hear the rest. She’d spotted an exit, a mostly empty hallway of stairs leading to what she could only see as daylight, the glare blinding her. Allison pushed open the doors, practically bolting out into the sunshine. She ran, shoving past people in black, skidding into…

A plane roared to life above her, flying off into the clear blue sky. Her hair whipped into her face as she looked around, increasingly confused. Allison felt a rising panic when she saw the edge, the concrete ledge. She ran towards it, long legs letting her be quicker than the SHIELD agents that had noticed her commotion. Allison gaped when she could see below her, vertigo making her head spin. It was like when she’d landed on the tower, confusion and anger a tumult in her stomach. 

Someone grabbed her arm. Allison looked back, too disoriented to pull away. Clint sighed shortly, looking to the side at the huge, whipping propeller filling her ears with deep, thrumming noise. For the first time, she noticed a rumbling beneath her feet, a thrumming hum that had been there since she had woken up. 

“You said I was in New York,” she said. 

“You are, technically,” he agreed, pointing down at a tiny, tiny building below them. “That’s the Chrysler building.”

She swallowed, backing up from the edge a little. Clint let her, stepping back as he took the gun from her hand. Without a second thought, he threw it off the… whatever sort of goliath contraption they were on. Allison gaped watching the speck whip back into the sky, and he chuckled in a self-satisfied way. Allison glanced down when she couldn’t see the black gun anymore and noted the half-broken handcuffs dangling from the wrist Clint was holding her arm with. “How did you…”

“A magician never tells,” he said almost smugly, tugging her firmly towards the center, back to the entrance she’d escaped from. 

Allison gritted her teeth, following with what dignity she had left. A sort of sinking feeling of helplessness and disappointment roiled in her gun, accompanied by a twinge of embarrassment from those curious SHIELD eyes watching as Clint led her back to her interrogation room. 

Clint pressed a button on a wall, little screen lighting up blue when he did so. He pressed a bunch of numbers, using his shoulder to shield Allison from seeing. “Admin, this is Hawkeye. Allison Hargreeves has been apprehended.” 

Allison was just glad he didn’t call her  _ Number Three _ . That, coupled with the sickening lurch of embarrassment, would have felt too much like her father catching her after one of her many half-assed attempts at running away. 

Clint didn’t let go of her all the way back to that little silver room. She could have walked by herself, didn’t see the point in running off now. The place was too big, she’d seen that, seen that it stored entire  _ planes  _ on just the surface level. She’d never find her siblings, not in this conspicuous dress and certainly not with Clint-the-unrumorable on her tail. 

The only real solution to this problem she could see involved murder, and Allison Hargreeves typically frowned on murder. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoOOO that was a long chapter. also fun fact whenever I write allison/luther scenes like the one three chapters ago I listen to FRIENDS on repeat to pacify myself


	16. My Way or the Highway

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, sorry this is late! also sorry this is subpar writing I have no beta

“It was crazy!” Peter swung through the city, ignoring the usual shouts of astonishment from the crowds and pedestrians. “They were fighting and yelling and I really thought I was gonna have to bust in there and… I don’t know, kick some butt, but I listened for a little bit longer because you’ve been trying to talk me into being more careful and I--”

“Slow down!” said Ned, crackling a little through the newly-booted-up comms. “All I wanna know is if that white beam thing was dangerous.” Peter heard a crinkling of a wrapper. 

He zipped around a particularly nasty corner he’d learned to be wary of, frowning. “Ned, are you eating my Christmas candy?”

“Dude. Doesn’t matter, big beam thing?”

“Are you seriously eating my candy?”

Ned huffed. “Fine. Yes. I got nervous, you were gone for like twenty minutes and you kept shushing me when I called you,” he muttered, frustrated.

Peter narrowed his eyes suspiciously behind his mask, narrowly missing an inconvenient pole. “Please tell me you at least left the strawberry stuff alone.”

Ned sighed. “I did, dumbass, now tell me about the beam!”

“Okay. So. I heard Mr. Stark calling Director Fury through the wall, which he yelled at me about, but that’s okay. He was saying something about Vanya and Luther, and I know Luther’s the big guy who didn’t run away. I met him once when they were asking me more questions about the dude who stabbed me in the leg.”

“Right,” Ned said, static crackling. “You had to skip Mr. Lennon’s class for that.”

Peter nodded, then realised Ned couldn’t see. “Yeah, anyway, I think that maybe Vanya is the next sibling they were trying to capture and somehow she like… got super angry and almost exploded. Or something.”

“And the big beam thing…”

He swung through an alley, gutter creaking as he swung off of it. “I dunno, but it didn’t do anything and she didn’t do it again.”

“That’s a relief,” muttered Ned, through a mouthful of Peter’s candy. Probably the chocolate. The delicious, delicious, chocolate that Peter would be stealing back when he got home. 

“Anyway there were a bunch of SHIELD agents there, plus I saw Clint and Natasha. Nat waved through the window at me, before Mr. Stark yelled at me. It was kind of cool. She’s cool. Anyway, I think they’re taking all the siblings to the heli--”

“Wait, wait, wait--hold on,” said Ned. “‘All the siblings?’ You mean there were more?”

“Oh, yeah!” Peter exclaimed, doing a backflip off of a convenient water tower out of giddy excitement. “Diego showed up.”

“The dude… who stabbed you in the leg.”

“Yeah, well, he was wearing a cop’s jacket now so I think he’s alright.”

“He  _ stabbed _ you. In the  _ leg _ ,” protested Ned. 

Peter shrugged, finally spotting the window he used for easy entrances into his bedroom, where Ned was likely sitting. They’d been grudgingly working on their English papers before they’d spotted the huge white energy beam outside of the window, causing Ned to nearly shove Peter out of the window in order to get him to go check it out. “I mean, I probably would have done the same thing, if I was that scared and alone,” Peter said amicably, dropping down onto the roof with a near-silent thump. 

“No,” Ned laughed over the comms. “No, you wouldn’t have. You would have sat in that glass cage for hours, man.”

Peter swiftly dropped down to the ledge, glaring at Ned through the open window. “No, I wouldn’t have!” 

Ned nearly fell out of his chair. “Jesus, don’t scare me like that!” he cried as Peter stepped neatly into the room, closing the window behind him. 

Peter grinned, throwing his mask to the side. “Gimme some of that candy.”

Sticking out his tongue, Ned threw a handful at him, likely hoping Peter would be surprised like he’d surprised Ned. No luck, as Peter’s spidey senses were too quick for that. He caught all three, to Ned’s frustration. As he popped one of the chocolates into his mouth, Peter pulled on his sweatshirt, covering his suit in case of an unexpected visitor. 

“Well?” said Ned, leaning back into the chair like a James Bond villain. They had just done a marathon of the classic movies, so it was possible he was unconsciously mimicking their behavior. Peter just hoped he didn’t pick up the murdery habits too. 

“Well, what?” replied Peter, plopping back down on the bed, still buzzing from the fight. 

Ned leaned forward, eyebrows going up incredulously. “You were super excited about something, and everything you’ve told me so far has not been exciting enough to warrant that kind of Peter Parker rant.”

Peter flopped onto the bed, eagle-spread arms crushing his mediocre English notes. “Mr. Stark asked me to find Klaus for him,” he said, staring at the ceiling and grinning. “He trusts me!”

“Klaus…” Ned pursed his lips, thinking, then snapped his fingers. “You told me about him after you came back from that briefing thing! Talks to the dead, right? Or was that the woman…”

Peter dug through his suit pocket for the picture Mr. Stark had given him. He threw it at Ned, still staring at the ceiling. “Looks like that,” he explained. “And yeah, he talks to the dead. And he’s got a ghost brother who hangs out with him, who has tentacles. Kinda a double threat.” It was a mark of distinction that Peter was trusted with this duty. He was finally moving up the ranks!

Ned’s chair creaked as he leaned back, examining the picture. “How the hell are you going to find him?”

Peter’s happy thoughts paused, the realizations stopping him in his tracks. “How am I…” he trailed off. Peter blinked. “Jesus, how  _ am  _ I going to find him?”

“Flyers?” suggested Ned hesitantly.

“SHIELD tried that,” Peter groaned. 

“Websites?”

“Done.”

“Warrant?”

“Ned, it’s SHIELD. There’s probably twelve.”

“Um…” Ned trailed off. 

Peter stared at his ceiling hopelessly, hoping to find some sort of answer in the popcorn pattern.  _ You’ll figure it out. _ Mr. Stark had said he would, but Peter was just beginning to realise he had no idea how. He knew what Klaus looked like, but that was about it. Okay, maybe he knew the guy liked drag queens and chocolate, but those things were useless! He had to think like Mr. Stark, like he was smarter than he actually was. Maybe try… scanning the city for some sort of energy signature? But he had no idea how to build such a thing, and asking Mr. Stark was out of the question...

“Okay, let’s start small,” said Ned, startling Peter out of his thoughts, snatching a piece of paper and a pen. “What do you know about the guy?”

“Likes drag queens and chocolate, goes by the name Number Four sometimes, was once an addict--”

“Addict!” crowed Ned, entirely too cheerful about it. “That’s a start.”

“SHIELD has bound to have tried rehab,” muttered Peter, still focused on the popcorn ceiling. Think, think, think… a tracker? No, he would have to actually find the guy first...

Ned hummed. “Oh, but what happens if you can keep out of rehab? Or what if you showed up in New York City with nothing but the shirt on your back, no family, no resources…”

Peter suddenly got what Ned was being so vague about. “Should I… check in with FEAST? Maybe some other homeless shelters?” said Peter, cogs turning. “Show them the picture?”

Ned tapped the pen to his temple. “Now you’re getting it. What else?”

“Um, that’s about all Mr. Stark gave me,” sighed Peter, sitting up into a cross-legged position. 

Ned leaned back into that chair, eyes searching some unknown point in the horizon. It was creepy, how much he sometimes looked like the evil geniuses Peter sometimes fought. Ned was too much of a lovable softy to do anything bad, though. “What if you had magic powers?”

“I do,” said Peter automatically. 

Ned rolled his eyes. “Different magic powers. Stuff like--” he looked at his paper, “--levitation and talking to the dead… an invisible ghost brother…”

“I’d probably…” Peter rested his chin in his hands, trying to think. What would Mr. Stark do? He’d look for any signs of abnormalcy, scan each less fortunate neighborhood for any suspicion, maybe build something to look for use of powers. But Peter didn’t have the time, or the money, to do any of that. “I… I don’t know,” he said, brow furrowing. 

Ned smiled at him. “Likes drag queens?”

“What?” Peter laughed.

“No, no, listen to me,” Ned protested, holding his hands up. “Dude likes showmanship, has a decent face, and magic powers. I would bet--and this is just a guess, mind you-- but I would bet that he’s in the entertainment industry somehow.”

“And in a homeless shelter?” said Peter sceptically. “That doesn’t chalk up.”

Ned shrugged, leaned back, and popped a candy into his mouth. “I dunno. I’m an ideas man, not a results man.”

Two days later, Peter was inwardly chuckling. Because he’d just spotted a very colorfully dressed man standing on a bench in the middle of Times Square, having just levitated four inches off the ground. Ned’s way had worked, to Peter’s infinite surprise. Asking around instead of relying on tech, like Mr. Stark would have done. He called up his friend, wind whistling into his comms as he perched on top of a building. 

“Ned, you’ve just graduated. You’re a results man now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... regret how many characters there are in both universes... perhaps I'll have to... kill some of them...


	17. Bullshit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no beta we die like the characters I'm going to murder will /j

“This is  _ bullshit _ .”

“Be that as it may,” said Hill, grinding her teeth as she pressed an ice bag to her forehead. “We need you to do it. Clearly Luther’s point of view on the events in your family was not entirely objective truth, so we need a clearer account of things. Since Allison seems to not be cooperating, and since the only person able to interact with her is equally as volatile, you are our only option.”

Diego slouched lower in the  _ incredibly uncomfortable _ seat, hands cuffed close to the table. He’d been sitting there for what felt like hours, enough for him to start running through that stupid Shakespeare dear old Dad had made him memorize way back then. 

_ Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, _

_ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, _

_ To the last syllable of recorded time; _

_ And all our yesterdays have lighted fools _

_ The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! _

_ Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, _

_ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, _

_ And then is heard no more. It is a tale _

_ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, _

_ Signifying nothing. _

Then Hill had shown up, stormed through the little gray cage and slammed a folder onto the desk, explaining the wound on her head that had come from collapsing into the corner of a desk after being rumored by Allison.  _ Good for her.  _ She’d given him the bare bones of his sister’s escape attempt, and then outlined in crisp detail why that was a bad idea. Each fact about where Diego was had his vague hope of escape diminishing, until all he had left was a bitter feeling in his gut. Then, once she’d seen he wasn’t going to try and stab her, she’d demanded to know everything about their family. Their extremely private family that did not like intruders. 

“Bullshit,” Diego muttered again, slightly more petulant this time. “You don’t even have a warrant.”

“As I have explained, Mr. Hargreeves,” she gritted out, frustrated fire in her eyes, “We do not need one.”

Diego rolled his eyes. “Which is still bullshit. I’m not telling you anything.”

The pencil in Hill’s left hand snapped. “You. And your family. Are so goddamn frustrating--” She took in a deep breath, dark eyes fluttering closed.

_ She looks like Patch.  _

The sudden realization hit him hard. It was true, that crisp attitude and tied-back hair, the clipped, barely-tolerant words. The way she brushed her hair from her eyes, the short fuse behind those professional, clipped words. “Okay, fine,” said Diego shortly, attempting to cross his arms and miserably failing due to the short chain on his handcuffs.

Hill’s eyes snapped open, but Diego’s avoided hers. He felt some annoying emotion roiling in his gut, a paroxysm of confused feelings so weird they hurt. “Really?”

Diego stayed silent, only responded with a half-shrug he felt conveyed his decision pretty well. 

“Well, I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth,” she muttered, turning to a blank page in her folder and grabbing a pen from her pocket. She clicked it once, eyes flickering up to his for a moment. “Let’s start at the beginning. Tell me about the circumstances of your adoption.”

“Our father was a prick,” started Diego, figuring since that was where everything about his life began and ended, it was simple enough. But from the way Hill’s eyebrow rose he knew she already had objections. 

Hill flipped to another page in the folder. “Your brother said he ‘was a good man of science and did his best to take care of us in his own way’.”

Diego stifled a derisive laugh, chin ducking towards his collar. “That’s bullshit,” he explained, meeting Hill’s curious eyes. “Luther’s a daddy’s boy, it’d take physical torture to get him to say anything bad about the old man. He really did a number on our number one. Our father was abusive, cold, arrogant…” Diego shook his head, that long-simmering anger at his fucked-up childhood bubbling to the surface. “He mocked us on a daily basis, subjected us to batshit crazy experiments, and manipulated us for years into hating each other.”

Hill’s eyebrows rose as her hand worked to keep up with Diego’s words. “That’s certainly a different picture than what Luther painted us.”

“Like I said, daddy’s boy.”

“Right. Adoption?”

Diego shrugged. “A bunch of women around the world gave birth without ever going through pregnancy, our father thought that was fascinating or some bullshit and tried to buy as many as he could. He only got seven.”

She nodded. “That checks out with what Luther said. Tell me about your childhood, then.”

“This feels like therapy,” Diego muttered. “Fine. Like I said, he made us do experiments.” Talking about his father left a sort of venomous aftertaste in his mouth, something he’d tried to cure by dropping that damn monocle into the murky depths where he’d spent most of his childhood.

“Like…”

“Like he put me in a tank of water for hours, locked Klaus in a mausoleum, fucked with Ben so much he…” Diego swallowed. “Anyway. When we were 13 he put us to tests in the real world. Stopping crimes. He called them missions, and we had a whole alarm bell routine thing when something bad happened.”

“Did you like those missions?”

“Kind of. They were like, I don’t know, the powered kid’s version of recess.” He saw the expression on Hill’s face. “Yeah, I know, it’s messed up,” he sighed, slouching a little more. 

“Tell me about your powers,” she said primly, making a short note in the margins of her paper. 

Diego grabbed the sharp half of the pencil she’d broken, hefted it, and then threw it downward. Well, with anyone else it would have gone downward. Instead, it went straight back into his hand, like it was a yo-yo. Noticing Hill’s look of suspicion, he held the pencil out in his hand for her to take, and she did, gently. “It still feels normal,” she said hesitantly, hefting its weight in her hand. 

“Why would it feel different?” he asked, scoffing a little. “Anyway, the old man called it trajectory manipulation. Works sometimes on stuff in the air, too, but sometimes it doesn’t.”

“What do you mean?” Hill said curiously, writing furiously.

“Bullets. Other knives. One time Allison threw a book at me and I bounced it right back at her, but it’s hard, and I don’t do it often. It’d be too risky to just stand in front of a gun and hope that it might work.” Diego was tempted to brag about his powers, but something in the way Hill was writing down every word made him hesitant to pump himself up too much. 

She nodded. “Uh huh. You mentioned Allison, tell me about her?”

“Uh…” Diego felt comfortable talking about himself, and ranting about his fucked-up childhood was always a pastime of his, but Allison… well, Allison would probably smack him if he said something she didn’t agree with. “I’m done,” he decided. “That’s all.”

Hill steepled her hands in front of her, examining him curiously with a cocked head. “Why? Is there something pertinent about Allison you don’t want to tell me?”

“More like there’s stuff I don’t think she’d want me to tell you about her,” Diego clarified. “Besides, even though he’s an idiot, Luther’s probably a better source of information on Allison. Two peas in a pod, them. I haven’t seen either of them in years, up until when dad died.”

Hill hummed, closing the file. “Well, when you decide to cooperate more fully, I’ll come back. Until then, sit tight.”

“What?” Diego sat up, chain on his handcuffs jingling. His brows furrowed incredulously. “You’re not going to let me go?”

“No,” she said, standing and collecting her things. “There’s paperwork.”

“What about my siblings?” Diego growled, standing with her. “Can I see them?”

She shook her head, dark hair swishing around her chin. That crisp demeanor was really starting to get on Diego’s nerves. “Not right now. I have to certify you’re not a threat first, and judging by the actions of your sister Allison earlier that’s going to be a great deal more difficult than imagined.”

“That’s-”

“Bullshit?” she guessed, eyebrow quirking as she hugged the file to her chest. Diego swallowed, jaw clenching. “I figured,” she sighed, turning smartly on her heel and heading out of the door. 

Making a futile gesture of aggression with the hand chained to the table, Diego sat down heavily into the incredibly uncomfortable chair.  _ Fuck this bullshit.  _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my GOD diego is easy to write. just slap some sass on there and see what happens. sorry it's short but our fave sociopath should be showing up soon...


	18. I Miss You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's that? she's got inspiration again?

The apocalypse felt different. 

Five’s apocalypse, the one he’d tried and failed to prevent, had tasted like smoke, like pressing a battery to his tongue. Awful, terrible, full of fire and danger and surprising, aching loneliness. This apocalypse was a ghost, a whisper of silent emptiness. The wind constantly rustled the strewn papers and leaves, remnants of a time when things lived. Strangely, Five found no bodies, but he didn’t ever go down from the tower, only explored the top twenty floors or so. That was relieving, but it carried with it a chilling fear that something was at work he didn’t understand. 

He tried not to think about it. 

Every single phone was dead, the electricity didn’t work, even the contraptions he found that (he was pretty sure) took batteries were unable to turn on. It was like the energy had been sucked out of the world, leaving a hollow shell of wind and dust. Anything fresh he found was shriveled and black. He’d tried eating some blueberries he’d found in a fridge, but they just melted into inedible ash in his mouth. So a diet of chips and alcohol it was. He’d had worse.

The sky was grey, it poured for hours at a time, the clouds roiling above Five’s makeshift hideout in the workshop he’d discovered three floors down. The whole workshop was cluttered with confusing machines he didn’t understand, but he wasn’t scared of them anymore, given how he’d spent eight days there and none of them had turned on. There was no dust inside the workshop, only shining machines with the word STARK emblazoned on the clean metal. He’d discovered Mara on his third day, a remnant of an unfinished red and gold helmet, with a sparkling laugh and gleeful jokes. Different than Delores’s dry humor, but then everything about this world was different. 

Eight days. That was how long it took for Five to scribble out the right equations. “Mara!” he shouted, pointing his chalk at the broken flat screen he’d been using as a chalkboard. Mara had been asleep until Five had shouted, and she started, blearily blinking her red metal eyes at Five. 

“Oh, stop it, you sleep half the day anyway,” teased Five, still staring at his math. He was in a happy mood, now that he’d cracked the distortions for the repeating cycle of paradoxes. It had been a thorn in his side for two days. “Now. The plan,” he muttered, turning to the second chalkboard-screen, which was also covered in white scribbles of equations. 

“So I know my siblings survived. Stark told me that,” he started, voice rough from disuse. He spun back around, grabbing a blank sheet of paper he’d torn off a roll of blueprint paper he’d found in a closet. His makeshift blackboards were full. 

“And I survived, though I was separated. So it’s logical to assume that if I was separated, so were they,” he explained as he rolled out the paper. Mara agreed with him. “And unless this apocalypse happened all on its own, I’m going to guess they had something to do with it,” he muttered bitterly. Though, if someone other than Mara had been listening, they might have detected a bit of hidden fondness beneath those sarcastically spoken words. 

“Now, time travel. Time travel is tricky, messy, and doesn't like the rules,” continued Five, making gestures with his hand as he started to write down repetitions of equations, double checking the more tricky bits. When he had been little with his siblings, he’d always thought best like this, out loud. Explaining things while simultaneously figuring out the next step. Mara didn’t understand why time travel was so difficult, if Five had done it a week ago. 

Five gave a little huff of laughter, wiping a smear of soot off his cheek. “Well, listen. What I did, a week ago? A miracle. A straight-up miracle, and if I wasn’t atheist I’d think God was benign for giving us that. I could have killed them, Mara.”

She still didn’t understand. Good Lord, Mara was stupid. Delores on her worst day had been more intellectual than that.

“There are a million, no, a billion ways I could have fucked that jump up. Could have, could have ripped them all into atoms, could have sent them across the universe, could have stranded them in the void forever!” ranted Five, still sketching out the equations for the dates he’d heard. “I could have made them all in their teenage bodies, could have done something to the time dilation projections and sent half of them two billion years into the future and half of them that many backwards. I could have killed them in so many ways and all I did was separate them in an alternate universe?” Five stopped his scribbling to stare at Mara. “We are the luckiest bastards alive,” he finished, before going back to his work, peering at his numbers. “Whatever. Still probably could have done better, but it’s what I got to work with so I’m working with it. But that just makes it all the more likely I’m going to fuck  _ this _ jump up. That’s why I’ve been trying so hard to get it right.”

Mara giggled a little, before pointing out he’d done the calculations for the Earth’s rotation wrong because he’d put it for six people instead of one. 

“Thank you,” he muttered, grey eyes flickering over the neat equations.

Mara asked a careful question. He stopped, pen hovering over the paper. 

“What am I going to do after that?” he repeated blankly. “Well, I…” 

He’d been so focused on desperately trying to figure out the mechanics of this universe he hadn’t quite thought about  _ after _ yet. Five began to pace, sticking his cut-up hands in his pockets. “Well, I’m gonna go back as far as I can, somewhere between December 13th, 2018 and the day this apocalypse happened, April 29th, 2019, given the calendar.” He pointed at the cheerful calendar he’d taped to the screen, below a whole slew of other numbers. 

Five had flipped through it idly one time, on a foolish whimsy. He’d seen  _ Anniversary - get pepper anything but strawberries, maybe go buy a jewelry store? romantic??  _ scribbled in red pen, surrounded by hearts, two days after the last crossed-off box. It made his heart twinge with irritating emotions, which he’d shoved deep, keeping focus on the math for his jump. 

“I’ve got almost a whole year for a landing pad, and if I land anywhere in there I’ll consider it a job well done. But I really want somewhere in December of 2018 just for more time.” 

She huffed. 

“Oh, well, of course I know I could screw with the whole projection dialog by going back that far, but really it’s the best plan I’ve got and I don’t see you volunteering any ideas.” Five tapped his chin as his grey eyes scanned his numbers. “Still a little wobbly on the minute velocity of the Earth’s rotation but I think it’ll be okay. Gotta get going while I’m still young, eh?” He chuckled to himself. 

Mara wanted to know what happened next, but he didn’t even really know himself. All he knew was he couldn’t let the apocalypse happen, to anyone, ever. None should have to go through what he did, even in death. To be honest, if he had to spend even one more day in this desolate wasteland, hearing nothing but his own voice and the whisper of grey dust against concrete, he’d probably go insane. “Well… then I talk to Stark, whoever he is. And we he'll help me stop the apocalypse. Might have to kill a few gardeners to do it, but I won’t fail this time.” 

Five said. He stopped his pacing to look at Mara. 

“I can’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jk I already had this written and wanted to share :3 some sad five as a gift. sorry it's short, next chapter should be longer (emphasis on should). please tell me what you think!! comments are not annoying they are AMAZING!


	19. Did You Miss Me?

Maria Hill had known for a while Luther Hargreeves wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Like a hammer. Perhaps a wrench. But in recent hours, between filing frantic reports and questioning the siblings, she’d begun to suspect he was more of a mallet, something exceedingly dull and largely useless. “Maybe a plank of wood,” she muttered as she marched down the hallway towards the elevator, clipboard clutched close to her chest. 

“What was that, ma’am?” asked one of the assistants perpetually following her around. They stepped into the elevator, Hill briskly turning to face the door.

Maria stabbed the ninth floor button with her pen. “Nothing. Pay it no mind.” She sighed, chewing her lip as she contemplated the tangle of confusing tasks before her. “Any news on where the hell Fury’s at?” Maria snapped, eyes focused on the doors of the elevator as it began to rumble downwards. 

The assistant blinked. “Uh… ma’am… Fury’s dead.”

Maria’s eyes flickered over to him in a cursory glance. “What clearance level are you?”

“Three, ma’am.”

“Then forget I ever said anything.”

The elevator doors slid open, and Maria walked purposefully out of them, heels clicking on the metal floor. She went to room 34C with a vengeance. She slammed open the door, inside of which were several men and women murmuring over a screen. On the screen were five pictures of five increasingly frustrating siblings. “What have you got?” Maria snapped, and every person in the room immediately looked over their shoulders. They were a task force, a mix of technical experts and assessors. Maria had many task forces, but this one in particular was devoted to the problem of the Hargreeves siblings. 

One of them stepped forward, with the due amount of respect and hesitance Maria had come to expect. God, she hated it. She was swimming in so much goddamn respect she would probably drown. She just wanted Fury to get his act together and come back from faking his own death (for the eighth time, and this attempt was so half-assed even the Avengers knew he was alive) so she could work like she used to. In the shadows. The man who’d stepped forward cleared his throat, twining his hands together. “I went over the security footage of the fight between Agent Black Widow and Diego Hargreeves.” 

Maria searched for a name, eyes lighting when she came to it. “Mr. Li. What did you find?” She folded her arms, stepping forward to contemplate the blue screen.

“Russian combat, wrestling, jiu-jitsu, all executed quickly and with ease... he’s good. Coupled with Black Widow’s assessment of him in her report, I’d say, just technically, he’s the most dangerous of them.” Hill scribbled it down in her clipboard. “Not counting powers, of course,” Mr. Li added quickly. “I also went over Agent Hawkeye’s takedown of Allison Hargreeves.”

“And?”

“She’s nearly as good, though a bit out of practice.” Mr. Li swiped the screen with a gesture, bringing it to a screenshot of the security cameras where one of Allison’s legs was highlighted with a red circle. “See, here, she let herself get off of balance when our agent hit her across the cheek. She’s not used to combat, at least right now. But she knew how to keep in control, which is… more important, I think.”

Hill sighed, clicking in her mouth. “Neither of them mentioned training, and Luther did not mention the extent of it. Whatever, it’s mostly irrelevant. I want to know about powers.” She glanced around the room, watched everyone’s eyes slide away. She snapped her fingers. “Come on, people. Surely you’ve got something.”

One of the scientists stepped up, a Mrs. Henderson. “Well. We know how Number One’s powers work--”

“I’d ask you to stop calling him that,” Hill interrupted, somewhat bitterly. “Clearly given how he was utterly incompetent today I’d think he needs some reassessment before joining the team permanently.”

The scientist swallowed. “Of course, ma’am. Well, in simple terms, he redistributes any undue weight he’s carrying into reserves of… sort of like wells. When the wells overflow, he can’t lift anymore.”

Maria jotted it down disinterestedly. “I want to know about Allison. Diego didn’t give me any information on her.”

“We... don’t really know,” said the scientist slowly, shifting on her feet. “We know she can control people through writing, though it seems to be harder for her. And we know it’s activated through the phrase ‘I heard a rumor’. But… the readings we collected told us little to nothing,” the scientist lamented, and Maria could hear her frustration. “There was no radiation, no nothing other than a slight fluctuation in particle waves--”

“Particle waves,” whispered someone in the corner. They snapped their fingers. “That’s it!”

Maria turned to them, crossing her arms. “Who are you?”

“Dr. Burnham,” she said quickly, eyes darting around in that crazed, thought-captivated way the scientists at SHIELD so often did. “I’m in radiation and power physics.” she explained absentmindedly, waving a hand as if she’d said it a hundred times before. “You said particle waves, and I thought I remembered something, something… about particle waves in Dr. Banner’s lecture last year about mind control with--”

“Loki!” interrupted another one of the scientists, eyes bright with understanding. “Yes, yes! He manipulated reality inside Agent Hawkeye’s brain, changed the very electrons in his decision-making sectors, influencing him to the point he couldn’t control his own actions--”

“And the same thing happens with Allison’s powers,” put in Dr. Burnham excitedly, gesturing towards the image of their fight on the screen. “Which is why, at minute 3:46, when she tried to take control of him--”

“It didn’t work,” murmured the second scientist. “He’d built up immunity. Something that Loki did to him made those electrically activated pathways Allison tried to take advantage of impossible to breach.”

Hill understood about half of what her scientists were babbling about, but she jotted down the jist of it. Now she understood why Agent Barton hadn’t been affected by Allison’s takeover. Hill still shivered whenever she thought of Allison’s cold words.  _ I heard a rumor. _ It had been mind-numbingly terrifying, having her own movements, trained and sharpened over years of practice, taken over just like that, with a few simple words. Allison herself wasn’t particularly frightening, to Hill. Allison seemed like the type of person she could be friends with, if Hill was the type of person to make friends. But those powers shook her. And when something scared Maria Hill, she made it her job to learn as much about it as she could. She felt better already as she wrote down what her scientists were shouting about. 

Hill made a gesture for quiet, and the science jargon being thrown around murmured to a halt. “So we have Allison figured out,” she began. 

“I mean, for the most part,” interrupted Dr. Burnham quickly, fiddling with a pen. “There’s still some discrepancies. For instance, how does she affect those electrons over such a distance, when Loki had to--”

“Enough, please,” snapped Hill. “You can discuss specifics later. I want to know if there is any way to prevent being taken over. Any sort of training or…”

The scientists glanced at each other. “I… I don’t think so,” piped up one of them. “Really, I think we’re just lucky we have Agent Barton. He’s probably the only reason she can’t leave.”

Hill sighed, and scratched it down. That was rather unfortunate, but he was right. They were rather lucky to have anything at all, concerning these siblings. Everything was so complicated. It was almost too much for her to handle, all by herself. The siblings, the strange readings from various satellites, the pity party Steve was throwing… and the break room was out of the good coffee. “Perfect,” she muttered, eyes scanning over the clipboard. " What about Diego?”

“Diego’s…” The scientists collectively shrugged. “Best we’ve got is it’s some sort of airborne telekinesis. He can do it to anything in motion, but can’t increase the velocity of the object, only the direction.”

“It’s like…” Dr. Burnham pursed her lips, looking at the ceiling. “Well, it’s like he can hold the object’s velocity and just…” She made a motion with her hand. “Move it wherever he wants.”

“That’s very succinct,” said Hill dryly, marking down the gist anyway. So Diego remained mostly a mystery on the science side, but Hill didn’t really care about the science side. Or Diego. He was less important than-- “Vanya?”

The scientists looked at each other. 

“Well?” Maria said, crossing her arms. “Nothing? Come on, you figured out Allison.”

They all shifted slightly. “It’s difficult,” muttered one of them, looking sheepish. “She blew up the containment, floated off the ground, glowed white, and sent up a giant beam of energy into the sky.” He swallowed. “There’s not. There’s not. One thing to describe it.”

Of course. Of course the one Hill knew she had to contain (and fast) was a scientific mystery.

Someone in the corner piped up. “Um. Carter Iplier, here. Psychologist. I do know you shouldn’t cage her again. Diego said something about this happening last time, whatever that means, and… well, just look at the footage. Vanya’s not fond of being trapped.”

“So how do we solve that?” muttered Maria. “We can’t have her free, we can’t have her caged…”

“Try a window,” suggested Dr. Iplier. “But make it a fake window, and put another layer of containment around it, just in case.”

Hill thought about that idea. Surprisingly, it was a good one. She wrote it down, neat handwriting under the column marked  _ Vanya Hargreeves _ . Even with all her failings, at least she was organized. “Well, someone’s thinking with their head," she muttered. Maria wrote down Dr. Iplier's name as well, scribbling  _ raise?  _ next to it. “Now, what about--”

“Hill,” said someone behind her. 

“What?” Maria sighed, dreading whoever it was adding another problem to her ever-growing list. She turned, slightly exasperated. The familiar man standing in the door smiled a little, folding his leather-coated arms. Hill began to smile too, a rare sight.

“Did you miss me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> damn, I'm quite fond of really short chapters, aren't I? well. the main reason this took so long was I couldn't quite get the spacing of different characters quite right but whatever, amiright? anyway due to Plot reasons I'll be changing a few things about 'calling fury' and such in the previous chapters, just to make it less confusing.   
> also I love you <3 and comments make my WEEK


	20. Possessed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no beta we die like ben (twice, and with feeling)

Klaus knew someone was following him. Blame it on years of having to watch his own back, blame it on powers or training, whatever it was, Klaus knew when someone had their peepers on him. “Ben,” he muttered through gritted teeth, flipping his hat upside down and shoving his boa inside. He shivered in the cold of winter without the boa. Despite the itchy feathers, it was a source of warmth. 

Ben sighed, eyes fixated on that damn tower in the distance. The tower Klaus refused to even look at. It didn’t exist, as far as he was concerned. Ben had been trying to get him to go to it for two days, poking and prodding and making subtle hints about his siblings, trying to get Klaus to break. Klaus refused, but Ben was irritatingly persistent. “Yes?” Ben said finally, somehow stretching the word into four syllables in his exasperation. 

“Someone’s watching me.”

“You just finished a show,” he replied boredly. “Probably someone looking to see how you did it.”

Klaus shook his head, shoving the hat and boa into a hello kitty backpack he kept perpetually near his person. “Nope,” he murmured back, as he shrugged the backpack on. 

“How do you know?”

Klaus shrugged, veering between annoyed and flippant. “How do you have tentacles in your chest, buddy? How can I see the dearly departed? Hell if I know, but I can.”

Ben hummed from where he was laying on the ground, head resting on the palms of his hands. He always sat in the weirdest goddamn places, a habit Klaus had picked up from him in recent years. “Whatcha gonna do?” Ben asked dryly, eyes peering up at Klaus as he loomed over his brother. 

“Try to lose ‘em. Might be that talent scout again. Or the cops, who knows. You remember some copper… Mr. Harlan? Diego Harlan? He asked around about me? In Ms. July’s neighborhood. Maybe it’s him, tryna find me because of the food I stole that first week.”

“Hm. Could be one of the Avengers,” Ben murmured, idly turning his head to peer at that damn building again. God, every time he talked about them, his eyes got that cow-eyed, idealistic look. Klaus didn’t understand how Ben learned things when he was dead, much less age, but at times he thought Ben’s childlike naivety hadn’t changed at all. He was still so much of a kid inside. 

“Could be,” Klaus admitted, glancing around furtively again. He whipped out his heart-shaped sunglasses from the pocket of his backpack as he slipped his way into a crowd around another avid performer. “That’s not, y’know, better,” he muttered. 

Ben fizzled into view atop a statue near the other performer, teetering precariously on top of some racist guy’s horse. “It is,” he said. “It is better, because then maybe they’ll convince you to listen to  _ reason _ and go help them save the world.”

Klaus had no response but the ever-relevant “Fuck you” as he moved through the slowly dispersing crowd. For half a second, he thought he saw something red in the clear blue winter sky, but when he glanced up there was nothing. He shivered from the crisp December cold, hugging the pink straps of his backpack closer to himself. Klaus slipped into another moving crowd in that quicksilver way of his, hunching over so those long legs of his wouldn’t give him away to… whoever it was that was following him. 

“Maybe it’s Allison,” said Ben from somewhere behind him. “You know she’s here somewhere.”

“Yeah, Allison,” muttered Klaus. “Allison the responsible, Allison the perfect.”

“Allison, the one who held you when you went through withdrawal for the first time,” accused Ben. “Allison, the one who kept you from getting sent to prison. Allison, who--”

“Shut the fuck up. Listen, if she’s that protective and angelic, she’ll be the one to team up with Tony Stark to save the world,” argued Klaus, barely paying attention to the sidewalk anymore. He jostled against someone who looked at him strange, but then again, people always looked at him strange.

He heard Ben’s tired scoff even through the hustle and bustle of New York fucking City. Which highlighted to Klaus just how  _ annoying _ he was. “Yeah. Leave everyone else to do the hard work while you slack off. Doesn’t that sound familiar.”

Klaus growled under his breath, trying to keep his head down as he mentally charted his way to his shitty apartment. Through 12th, around the stupidly expensive “What, are you saying I’m selfish?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

Klaus spotted an alleyway. In a fit of helpless anger he made the collar of Ben’s shirt corporeal and took it in hand, dragged him into it and slapped him, though he forgot to make Ben’s face corporeal so it did nothing but fuzz a bit around the edges. Ben pushed him. 

“God, you lazy little--”

“--annoying low-budget Casper remake--”

“Low budget? Excuse me? I’m pretty sure that little 2D idiot cost less tha--”

“--your jacket? Yeah, even in death you’re fucking emo--”

“--least I’m not wearing a Hello Kitty backpa--”

“She is a fucking role model, uncultured little--”

Ben had wrestled him to the ground, hands around his neck as Klaus bucked with his knees. God, it was  _ cold  _ on the ground, and Ben’s hands were even colder. Klaus scratched at Ben’s face, squeezing his eyes shut. Ben wrestled him even further, reminding Klaus of those tedious hours of training back in the day. “Oh, yeah, you could certainly take a few lessons from someone who’s main goals in life are to give others happiness--”

Klaus scoffed, flicking Ben’s ear. “Fine, Hello Kitty’s a pussy, you’re a pussy--”

“I’m going to ignore that awful pun and I’m going to--”

“--wasn’t intentional--” he grunted.

“--the goddamn hippie sparkle out of you--”

Something cold shot through Klaus’s chest, made him gasp and his back arch on the cold, slippery ground. His hands dug into the comparatively warm ice as the freezing tingling sensation spread to his fingers. It felt like being tazed, and being high, but only the dizzy part of being high, none of the good happy chemicals. He couldn’t control his limbs, couldn’t control anything at all, only the sense of  _ get… out…  _ persisted through the mind-numbing cold. It stopped when he shoved Ben off of him, only saw the edge of Ben’s hand come out of his stomach. They panted in silence, staring at one another with shock-widened eyes. 

Ben swallowed. Klaus scrambled to his wobbly feet. “What the absolute fuck was tha--”

“Hi, I, uh…” said a voice from above them. Klaus’s head snapped up and he saw a… a fucking kid, hanging like a bat from the railing of a decrepit fire escape. Klaus started, head whirring with dizziness and confusion. 

“I don’t mean to interrupt, uh…” the kid,  _ Spider-Man,  _ Klaus was now realising, gestured with one hand, “...whatever’s going on there, but I’m going to need you to come with me.”

“Spider-Man?” said Klaus dumbly, stumbling away. “What are you… why are you here?”

Even upside-down, the kid puffed his chest out proudly. “I’m under direct orders from the man himself.”

Klaus spluttered. “You’re under direct orders from  _ God? _ ”

The eyes on the mask widened, and he gestured hurriedly with one gloved hand. “Oh, no! God, no. No, no, no, I meant Tony Stark, not--not--”

“Stark! That’s so much worse,” Klaus muttered, holding his head in one palm. He still felt vaguely sick from whatever Ben had done to him, and now his worst fears were coming true! Well… not his worst fears. The universe had yet to throw him chainsaw sharks. Klaus grabbed his backpack from where it had dropped onto the ground in their tussle and bolted towards the alley exit. Before he got there, Spider-Man dropped into view, holding out the patented  _ stop right there, in the name of the law! _ hand. “I’m not letting one of you get away again,” he warned. 

“One of me?” Klaus parroted, skidding to a halt. “Did you fight Allison or something?”

“Allison? What, no, your--”

Klaus smacked him across the cheek in a barely-remembered, barely-executed move from early childhood, the right hook or something. Spider-Man reacted immediately, kicked Klaus in the chest and onto the floor before he even had a chance to throw in a witty one-liner. Klaus groaned in pain, the Hello Kitty backpack not doing much to break his fall. He shouldn’t have hit the kid, should have known super-strength was one of his powers, he looked all wiry like Luther had been before he’d gone  _ Planet of the Apes. _

Spider-Man stood above him, raised a hand, and suddenly there was something  _ sticky _ and  _ gross _ all over Klaus’s mouth. Klaus tried to yell, but nothing but a muffled sound came out. Soon his hands were bound in the same disgusting manner. Jesus, Spider-Man’s powers were fucking weird.

Klaus tilted his head and glared at Ben, who was… leaning on a brick wall, grinning like he was possessed by a particularly smug Five.

Possessed. As Klaus was manhandled onto Spider-Man’s shoulder like a sack of scrawny potatoes, something about that stuck. Possessed. What had Ben been doing to him, before Klaus had shoved his brother off of him? Cold, tingly… it had felt like someone else had been inside his skin. Could… could Ben possess him?

Klaus’s ADHD kept him thinking about that the whole tumbly, shaking ride to the tower. That was… terrifying. Even more terrifying than the fact he was currently being taken to a man who may or may not perform experiments on him, and then may or may not participate in causing the death of all humanity. 

It was all very confusing, and Klaus’s eyes were permanently closed at this point given how every time he opened them Spider-Man had slung them into an equally dizzying view of New York. 

Eventually the lurching stopped, and Klaus felt solid concrete again, but he still didn’t open his eyes. It was still cold, and the wind hadn’t stopped. 

“Mr. Stark!” said Spider-Man, voice excited and very childlike. 

A door slid open. “If it was anyone else, I would be asking how they got on my balcony, but--oh my god, who is that?”

“It’s… it’s Klaus, you said to find Klaus Hargreeves and I--”

“And you actually did?” said Stark, and Klaus peeked open his eyes to look at him. Stark was staring at Klaus with such a weird, contorting expression of pride, bafflement and confusion that Klaus almost felt compelled to ask if he felt as sick as Klaus did. “How did you--? No, nevermind… Kid, I--”

“I did what you asked,” said Spider-Man, breathless. “Can I go up to the helicarrier now?”

“What? No. But this is…” Stark gave Spider-Man an awkward pat on the back, a bewildered smile on his face as he glanced between Klaus and the kid. “This is good! You’re, uh.. You’re moving up the ranks, kid.”

“Cool,” whispered Spider-Man, tugging on his mask a little. “Cool, cool,” he said, clearer this time. “Uh… what’re you gonna--”

“I’ll have Happy call you if we need you again,” said Stark seriously. “I need to get Hill on the line, get her to get a plane or something. Good work, kid.”

Spider-Man gave an awkward thumbs up as he backflipped off the ledge, a seemingly casual thing.

Klaus leaned his head back to glare at Stark, who looked him over with a mildly interested glance as he whipped out his phone, typing something in with a faster thumb than a highschool cheerleader. His eyes suddenly narrowed in his once-over of Klaus, however, and he was suddenly afraid Stark had spotted some drugs or something, instincts from a time before he’d gotten clean. 

“Wait,” said Stark slowly, carefully. Klaus’s heart rate quickened. “Are you wearing… a Hello Kitty backpack?”

Ben wasn’t around, but Klaus swore he could hear him laughing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> love writing klaus almost as much as I love comments <3 (a lot, that's a lot)


	21. Thank You for Your Cooperation

Vanya tried not to think about music. That had always calmed her down, before, but now she couldn’t think about Tchaicovsky or Beethoven without suddenly becoming aware of the knot of power in her chest, thrumming and humming with her heartbeat. She knotted her hands behind her neck, elbows on the cold table in front of her. She squeezed her eyes shut, making no attempt to still her bouncing leg. When she’d woken up, nobody had been there to greet her, no welcome wakeup other than the cold press of the table against her cheek. Just her and the walls. Well, there was one window, which she was grateful for. Vanya could see the sky, see the clouds flowing through the propeller to the right. When she felt that claustrophobia building up inside her, she glanced out of it into that empty blue space, boundless and free. 

Vanya heard _everything._ Heard the giant propellers outside, heard the whirring of machinery below her, heard the water flowing in the pipes. It was like music of its own, had a rhythm and a beat like any song. She heard the murmuring of voices far away, below her, above her, in elevators and around other machines. Heard fluorescent lights humming, heaters whirring and the metal clicks of keyboards.

Heard a voice. 

_Hello_ it said. _Hello. Who are you? I see you. Hello. Hello._

Vanya shivered, hands tightening on the back of her neck. She wasn’t supposed to hear voices, she knew that was wrong. Klaus heard voices, not her. 

So she didn’t think about that either. Instead, she thought about the table in front of her. It was silvery, probably made of tin or aluminium. Its edges were sharp, only rounded off a little. There was a little scrape edge facing her, probably caused by somebody being clumsy with a chair. She noticed there were scrapes around one of the poles as well. Her distracted brain only vaguely realised that it was from a pair of handcuffs rubbing against the metal. She only dimly noted that she wasn’t wearing said handcuffs. 

In the few panic-filled moments after she’d woken up, Vanya’d tried the door frantically, but it wouldn’t budge. She’d considered ripping it from its hinges. She didn’t do it, though. Didn’t want to. 

So she waited. Just her and the walls. 

She heard footsteps outside of the door. 

It creaked open, but Vanya didn’t look, instead staring at the silver table. “Hello,” said a soft, female voice. Different than the one in her head. “I’m Maria.”

The door shut again, and Maria walked to the table, pulled out the chair, and sat down delicately. “You’re Vanya, yes?”

Vanya swallowed. “Yes.”

“You sound hesitant. Do you want me to call you something else?” Her voice was soft and kind, and Vanya felt her shoulders relaxing. 

She shook her head a little. “No. Vanya’s fine.”

“Thank you. I’m going to ask you a couple questions, okay?”

“I’m sorry.” The words tumbled out of her mouth before she could stop them. Vanya glanced up once, meeting Maria’s perplexed brown eyes for a brief moment before Vanya ducked her head again. Maria was pretty. 

“Sorry about what?” asked Maria gently. 

Vanya shrugged a little, knee still bouncing beneath the table. “Getting angry, back there. I don’t like being trapped.”

“I understand,” murmured Maria, and Vanya heard her scribble something down. That made something in Vanya’s chest twist uncomfortably for a second. “It’s okay, Vanya. Nobody got hurt.”

Vanya relaxed a little. She’d been worried someone had been caught in the blast when she’d blown the containment, a piece of shrapnel perhaps. “That’s good,” she muttered. 

“Now, I’d like to know about your childhood, first. Then we’ll move on to more recent events, okay?” said Maria gently. Something in Vanya registered that Maria was probably babying her, but honestly Vanya’s tormented brain needed a little babying right now. 

“Okay.”

“Something tells me you’re a little different than your siblings. Is that right?”

Vanya hesitated, then nodded. “I… I didn’t know about my powers until about two weeks ago. Our father hid them from us, made Allison use her powers to make me forget.”

“When was this?”

“We were seven.”

Maria paused, and Vanya heard her fiddling with her pen. “How did you break her spell?”

Vanya’s bouncing leg paused, for a second, then resumed. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think maybe Allison wanted me to.”

“Ah.” Maria sounded disappointed. 

“Where am I?” Vanya asked suddenly, glancing out of the window once again. 

The woman across from her tracked the movement with her eyes. Something like guilt flashed across her face. “We’re on the helicarrier.”

“The what?”

Maria smiled a little. “It’s a huge plane, six stories tall and I think an acre or so across. Though, technically speaking, it’s more of a helicopter.”

Vanya swallowed. “Oh.”

“Could you describe your powers to me?” asked Maria gently, clicking her pen again. 

Vanya made a halfhearted shrug with her shoulders. “I… it uses sound. Turn the sound into different things, like energy. I’m not too… I’m not too good at controlling it, yet. I’d like to be,” she added quickly, to appease any worries Maria might have. “Really, I’d like to be able to control it so I don’t have to… so I don’t hurt people. Ever.”

Maria’s eyes flickered up to Vanya’s as she scribbled something on the page in front of her. Something like understanding and warmth flickered behind those brown eyes, but soon enough it was covered by a professional straightening of cuffs. “Right,” muttered Maria, jotting down the last few words. “Who would you say is the most powerful member of your family?”

“Luther,” said Vanya almost immediately, trained by years of counting down their family. She hesitated, however, at Maria’s raised eyebrow. “I… no.”

“You are,” said Maria, with just enough inflection to make it into a question. 

Vanya swallowed, fiddling with her hands. It was hard for her to admit that, admit she had power over something for once in her life. It was what had stopped her from trying for first chair in her concert hall. “Yes,” she admitted, voice small. She took in a deep breath. 

“Who would be next?” asked Maria, marking something down in neat cursive. 

“Five,” Vanya replied. 

Maria’s brows drew together. “Yes. Five. I haven’t heard much about him. Teleportation powers, right? That’s what Luther told us.” 

Vanya nodded. 

“Well. I suppose that makes sense, teleporters are quite hard to…” Maria glanced up at Vanya’s face before clearing her throat. “Well. Yes.”

Teleporters are quite hard to _kill._ Vanya heard the finished sentence in her head and felt a little flicker of anger. Five would always be her favorite sibling, no matter how much of a murderer he had become. Hell, everyone in Vanya’s life was a murderer, he just happened to be the most prolific. 

“Who would be after that?” Maria murmured, not the least bit daunted by her little slipup. 

Vanya fiddled with the little hook on the side of the desk where handcuffs would go. “Allison, I guess. I would say Ben, but he’s dead.”

“Right. Then Diego?”

Vanya nodded. 

“Thank you. Now, I’d like you to tell me about the circumstances leading up to the destruction of your earth.”

Vanya fixed her eyes onto the top of Maria’s clipboard, ignoring the roaring in her ears. She didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to acknowledge what she’d done. 

“Vanya?” asked Maria gently. 

She shook her head. “I… Dad died. Everyone came for the funeral, Diego and Luther were fighting… Five came back… Leonard… Harold, he--”

She’d killed him. God, she’d killed him. And he deserved it. 

“Harold. That’s the man Luther said was responsible for the apocalypse,” murmured Maria, her hand scratching furiously on her clipboard. Vanya felt a little rush of anger again, didn’t want her thoughts and actions recorded like that. It felt like those tests, when she’d been little, locked in a room and made to break things while Father took notes. 

“He--” Vanya swallowed. “He manipulated me. Told me a lot of true things and then when I trusted him he told me a lot of lies. I didn’t know what I was doing. Not until it was too late.”

Maria’s eyes flickered up again, though they lingered on Vanya’s face with a little bit more trepidation than before. Vanya was suddenly reminded that this was an interrogation, and that she was trapped. “Can I see my siblings?” Vanya asked, suddenly cold. “I have to talk to them.”

Maria glanced out of the door. “Not right now,” she said, apologetic. “Allison’s been giving us trouble and I think Diego’s plotting his grand escape right now.”

“Luther?”

Maria smiled sympathetically, a little condescending. God, Vanya hated that. Being talked down to like she was stupid, especially by someone who knew practically nothing about her. 

Vanya’s hands tightened around the desk. “I’d like to see my brother, please.”

Maria noticed her tension. She took in a deep breath, Vanya heard the breath enter her lungs on a level thought impossible by the general population. “I’m afraid that’s not possib--”

The pencil in Maria’s hand snapped. Vanya swallowed, slouching a little back into her seat. Maria stayed perfectly still, probably shocked and maybe a bit scared. “I’m sorry,” started Vanya. “I didn’t mean to--”

“I think that concludes this session,” said Maria, standing and collecting her things. She left half of the pencil, though Vanya saw her tuck the other half into her pocket. “Thank you for your cooperation.” Maria turned smartly and ducked out of the door, and Vanya heard the lock click. 

She buried her head in her hands. “Shit,” Vanya muttered.

How did it always end like this? She always did something wrong, did something that made everyone turn away. First she wasn’t powerful enough, now she was too powerful. Her siblings and her father had made sure that would never happen, and now that thing that drove everyone away had spread to her. Maybe she was the problem, the thing that had broken their family. But Vanya just wanted to be normal, to have a normal life with a normal family--

_I can give you that._

Vanya shivered, laced her hands around the back of her neck again. She tried to ignore the deep voice in her head, but it just hummed a little. 

_Violin. Do you want to be free?_

“Yes.” Vanya didn’t register her whispered word until it had already passed her lips. 

_I can get you free. You won’t have to see this place, this city, this earth ever again._

Vanya glanced at the security camera above her, eyes flickering between it and the table in front of her. She swallowed. “I don’t even know who you are,” she whispered. 

_Do you know who Maria Hill is?_ The voice in her head scoffed, derisive and mocking. It seemed to sense her sudden discomfort and soothed. _You can leave my employment at any time, as long as I receive another in your place when you do. The one currently occupying your spot is… eager to leave, and I am dissatisfied with his performance. It all comes together, in the end._

Vanya shook her head a little, leg still bouncing. She knew she shouldn’t agree to this, knew nothing good would come of making deals with the devil whispering in her ear, but she was just so done. A fresh start sounded perfect, a place for her away from here, away from questions and guilt and siblings. Vanya was done. She’d blown up the goddamn moon, clearly she couldn’t be trusted with anything else. Too much power, not enough...

_So? Violin?_

“Yes.”

The voice rumbled in some approximation of happiness, pleasure and satisfaction echoing like a cave. 

_Good._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't freak out


End file.
